THE  RETURN  OF  RIP  VAN  WINKLE 


HISTORY 


OF 


AMERICAN    LITERATURE 


BY 
REUBEN   POST   HALLECK,   M.A.  (YALE) 

AUTHOR  OF  "HISTORY  OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE" 


NEW  YORK  •:•  CINCINNATI  •:•  CHICAGO 

AMERICAN    BOOK    COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  1911,  BY 
AMERICAN   BOOK  COMPANY. 

AT  STATIONERS'  HALL,  LONDON. 


HA&.ECK'S   HIST.    AM.    LIT. 
•          W.  P.      21 


PREFACE 

THE  wide  use  of  the  author's  History  of  English  Litera 
ture,  the  favor  with  which  it  has  been  received  in  all 
parts  of  the  United  States,  and  the  number  of  earnest 
requests  for  a  History  of  American  Literature  on  the  same 
plan,  have  led  to  the  writing  of  this  book.  It  has  not 
appeared  sooner  because  the  author  has  followed  his  rule 
of  making  a  careful  first-hand  study,  not  only  of  all  the 
matter  discussed,  but  also  of  a  far  greater  amount,  which, 
although  it  must  be  omitted  from  a  condensed  textbook, 
is,  nevertheless,  necessary  as  a  background  for  judgment 
and  selection. 

The  following  chapters  describe  the  greatest  achieve 
ments  in  American  literature  from  the  earliest  times  until 
the  present.  Many  pupils  fail  to  obtain  a  clear  idea  of 
great  American  authors  and  literary  movements  because 
textbook  writers  and  teachers  ignore  the  element  of  truth 
in  the  old  adage,  "The  half  is  greater  than  the  whole," 
and  dwell  too  much  on  minor  authors  and  details,  which 
could  reasonably  be  expected  to  interest  only  a  specialist. 
In  the  following  pages  especial  attention  has  been  paid, 
not  only  to  the  individual  work  of  great  authors,  but  also 
to  literary  movements,  ideals,  and  animating  principles, 
and  to  the  relation  of  all  these  to  English  literature. 

The  author  has  further  aimed  to  make  this  work  both 
interesting  and  suggestive.  He  has  endeavored  to  pre 
sent  the  subject  in  a  way  that  necessitates  the  comparison 

5 

459833 


g  PREFACE 

of  authors  and  movements,  and  leads  to  stimulating  think 
ing.  He  has  tried  to  communicate  enough  of  the  spirit 
of  our  literature  to  make  students  eager  for  a  first-hand 
acquaintance  with  it,  to  cause  them  to  investigate  lor 
themselves  this  remarkable  American  record  of  spiritu 
ality,  initiative,  and  democratic  accomplishment.  As  a 
guide  to  such  study,  there  have  been  placed  at  the  end  of 
each  chapter  Suggested  Readings  and  still  further  hints, 
called  Questions  and  Suggestions.  In  A  Glance  Backward 
(p.  396),  the  author  emphasizes  in  brief  compass  the  most 
important  truths  that  American  literature  teaches,  truths 
that  have  resulted  in  raising  the  ideals  of  Americans  and 
in  arousing  them  to  greater  activity. 

Any  one  who  makes  an  original  study  of  American 
literature  will  not  be  a  mere  apologist  for  it.  He  will 
marvel  at  the  greatness  of  the  moral  lesson,  at  the  fidelity 
of  the  presentation  of  the  thought  which  has  molded  this 
nation,  and  at  the  peculiar  aptness  which  its  great  authors 
have  displayed  in  ministering  to  the  special  needs  and 
aspirations  of  Americans.  He  will  realize  that  the  youth 
who  stops  with  the  indispensable  study  of  English  litera 
ture  is  not  prepared  for  American  citizenship,  because  our 
literature  is  needed  to  present  the  ideals  of  American 
life.  There  may  be  greater  literatures,  but  none  of  them 
can  possibly  take  the  place  of  ours  for  citizens  of  this 
democracy. 

The  moral  element,  the  most  impressive  quality  in 
American  literature,  is  continuous  from  the  earliest  colo 
nial  days  until  the  present.  Teachers  should  be  careful 
not  to  obscure  this  quality.  As  the  English  scientist, 
John  Tyndall,  has  shown  in  the  case  of  Emerson  (p.  192), 
this  moral  stimulus  is  capable  of  adding  immeasurably  to 
the  achievement  of  the  young. 


PREFACE  7 

The  temptation  to  slight  the  colonial  period  should  be 
resisted.  It  has  too  often  been  the  fashion  to  ask,  Why 
should  the  student  not  begin  the  study  of  American  lit 
erature  with  Washington  Irving,  the  first  author  read  for 
pure  pleasure  ?  The  answer  is  that  the  student  would  not 
then  comprehend  the  stages  of  growth  of  the  new  world 
ideals,  that  he  would  not  view  our  later  literature  through 
the  proper  atmosphere,  and  that  he  would  lack  certain 
elements  necessary  for  a  sympathetic  comprehension  of 
the  subject. 

The  seven  years  employed  in  the  preparation  of  this 
work  would  have  been  insufficient,  had  not  the  author 
been  assisted  by  his  wife,  to  whom  he  is  indebted  not  only 
for  invaluable  criticism  but  also  for  the  direct  authorship 

of  some  of  the  best  matter  in  this  book. 

R.  P.   H. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER    I 

PAGE 

COLONIAL  LITERATURE .        .        9 

CHAPTER   II 
THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 65 

CHAPTER  III 
THE  NEW  YORK  GROUP 107 

CHAPTER   IV 
THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 153 

CHAPTER  V 
SOUTHERN  LITERATURE      ...„••••    287 

CHAPTER  VI 
WESTERN  LITERATURE       .  341 

CHAPTER  VII 
THE  EASTERN  REALISTS    .        . 367 

A  GLANCE  BACKWARD 396 


SUPPLEMENTARY  LIST  OF  AUTHORS  AND  THEIR  CHIEF  WORKS    399 
INDEX 423 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE 


CHAPTER   I 
COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

Relation  to  English  Literature.  —  The  literature  pro 
duced  in  that  part  of  America  known  as  the  United  States 
did  not  begin  as  an  independent  literature.  The  early 
colonists  were  Englishmen  who  brought  with  them  their 
own  language,  books,  and  modes  of  thought.  England 
had  a  world-famous  literature  before  her  sons  established 
a  permanent  settlement  across  the  Atlantic.  Shakespeare 
had  died  four  years  before  the  Pilgrims  landed  at  Plymouth. 
When  an  American  goes  to  Paris  he  can  neither  read  the 
books,  nor  converse  with  the  citizens,  if  he  knows  no 
language  but  his  own.  Let  him  cross  to  London,  and  he 
will  find  that,  although  more  than  three  hundred  years 
have  elapsed  since  the  first  colonists  came  to  America,  he 
immediately  feels  at  home,  so  far  as  the  language  and 
literature  are  concerned. 

For  nearly  two  hundred  years  after  the  first  English 
settlements  in  America,  the  majority  of  the  works  read 
there  were  written  by  English  authors.  The  hard  strug 
gle  necessary  to  obtain  a  foothold  in  a  wilderness  is 
not  favorable  to  the  early  development  of  a  literature. 
Those  who  remained  in  England  could  not  clear  away  the 

9 


10  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

forest,  till  the  soil,  and  conquer  the  Indians,  but  they  could 
write  the  books  and  send  them  across  the  ocean.  The 
early  settlers  were  for  the  most  part  content  to  allow  Eng 
lish  authors  to  do  this.  For  these  reasons  it  would  be 
surprising  if  early  American  literature  could  vie  with  that 
produced  in  England  during  the  same  period. 

When  Americans  began  to  write  in  larger  numbers, 
there  was  at  first  close  adherence  to  English  models.  For 
a  while  it  seemed  as  if  American  literature  would  be  only  a 
feeble  imitation  of  these  models,  but  a  change  finally  came, 
as  will  be  shown  in  later  chapters.  It  is  to  be  hoped, 
however,  that  American  writers  of  the  future  will  never 
cease  to  learn  from  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Shakespeare, 
Milton,  Bunyan,  and  Wordsworth. 

American  Literature  an  Important  Study.  —  We  should 
not  begin  the  study  of  American  literature  in  an  apologetic 
spirit.  There  should  be  no  attempt  to  minimize  the  debt 
that  America  owes  to  English  literature,  nor  to  conceal 
the  fact  that  American  literature  is  young  and  has  not  had 
time  to  produce  as  many  masterpieces  as  England  gave 
to  the  world  during  a  thousand  years.  However,  it  is 
now  time  also  to  record  the  fact  that  the  literature  of  Eng 
land  gained  something  from  America.  Cultivated  Eng 
lishmen  to-day  willingly  admit  that  without  a  study  of 
Cooper,  Poe,  and  Hawthorne  no  one  could  give  an  ade 
quate  account  of  the  landmarks  of  achievement  in  fiction, 
written  in  our  common  tongue.  French  critics  have  even 
gone  so  far  as  to  canonize  Poe.  In  a  certain  field  he  and 
Hawthorne  occupy  a  unique  place  in  the  world's  achieve 
ment.  Again,  men  like  Bret  Harte  and  Mark  Twain  are 
not  common  in  any  literature.  Foreigners  have  had  Amer 
ican  books  translated  into  all  the  leading  languages  of  the 
world.  It  is  now  more  than  one  hundred  years  since 


WHY   VIRGINIA   WAS   COLONIZED  II 

Franklin,  the  great  American  philosopher  of  the  practical, 
died,  and  yet  several  European  nations  reprint  nearly 
every  year  some  of  his  sayings,  which  continue  to  influ 
ence  the  masses.  English  critics,  like  John  Addington 
Symonds,  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  and  Edward  Dowden, 
have  testified  to  the  power  of  the  democratic  element  in 
our  literature  and  have  given  the  dictum  that  it  cannot 
be  neglected. 

Some  of  the  reasons  why  American  literature  developed 
along  original  lines  and  thus  conveyed  a  message  of  its 
own  to  the  world  are  to  be  found  in  the  changed  environ 
ment  and  the  varying  problems  and  ideals  of  American 
life.  Even  more  important  than  the  changed  ways  of  earn 
ing  a  living  and  the  difference  in  climate,  animals,  and 
scenery  were  the  struggles  leading  to  the  Revolutionary 
War,  the  formation  and  guidance  of  the  Republic,  and  the 
Civil  War.  All  these  combined  to  give  individuality  to 
American  thought  and  literature. 

Taken  as  a  whole,  American  literature  has  accomplished 
more  than  might  reasonably  have  been  expected.  Its 
study  is  especially  important  for  us,  since  the  deeds  asso 
ciated  with  our  birthplace  must  mean  more  to  us  than 
more  remarkable  achievements  of  men  born  under  other 
skies.  Our  literature,  even  in  its  humble  beginnings, 
contains  a  lesson  that  no  American  can  afford  to  miss. 
Unless  we  know  its  ideals  and  moral  aims  and  are  swayed 
by  them,  we  cannot  keep  our  heritage. 

Why  Virginia  was  Colonized.  —  In  1607  the  first  perma 
nent  English  colony  within  the  present  limits  of  the  United 
States  was  planted  at  Jamestown  in  Virginia.  The  colony 
was  founded  for  commercial  reasons  by  the  London  Com 
pany,  an  organization  formed  to  secure  profits  from  coloni 
zation.  The  colonists  and  the  company  that  furnished 


12  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

their  ship  and  outfit  expected  large  profits  from  the  gold 
mines  and  the  precious  stones  which  were  believed  to 
await  discovery.  Of  course,  the  adventurers  were  also 
influenced  by  the  honor  and  the  romantic  interest  which 
they  thought  would  result  from  a  successful  settlement. 

When  the  expedition  sailed  from  England  in  December, 
1606,  Michael  Dray  ton,  an  Elizabethan  poet,  wrote  verses 
dedicated  "To  the  Virginian  Voyage."  These  stanzas 
show  the  reason  for  sending  the  colonizers  to  Virginia ;  — 

"  You  brave  heroic  minds, 
Worthy  your  country's  name, 
That  honor  still  pursue, 
Whilst  loit'ring  hinds 
Lurk  here  at  home  with  shame, 
Go  and  subdue. 

And  cheerfully  at  sea, 
1  .       Success  you  still  entice, 

To  get  the  pearl  and  gold ; 

And  ours  to  hold 

Virginia, 

Earth's  only  paradise." 

The  majority  of  the  early  Virginian  colonists  were  unfit 
for  their  task.  Contemporary  accounts  tell  of  the  "  many 
unruly  gallants,  packed  hither  by  their  friends  to  escape 
ill  destinies."  Beggars,  vagabonds,  indentured  servants, 
kidnapped  girls,  even  convicts,  were  sent  to  Jamestown 
and  became  the  ancestors  of  some  of  the  "  poor  white 
trash  "  of  the  South.  After  the  execution  of  Charles  I.  in 
1649,  and  the  setting  up  of  the  Puritan  Commonwealth, 
many  of  the  royalists,  or  Cavaliers,  as  they  were  called, 
came  to  Virginia  to  escape  the  obnoxious  Puritan  rule. 
They  became  the  ancestors  of  Presidents  and  statesmen, 
and  of  many  of  the  aristocratic  families  of  the  South. 


WHY  THE  PURITANS   COLONIZED  NEW  ENGLAND       13 

The  ideals  expressed  by  Captain  John  Smith,  the  leader 
and  preserver  of  the  Jamestown  colony,  are  worthy  to  rank 
beside  those  of  the  colonizers  of  New  England.  Looking 
back  at  his  achievement  in  Virginia,  he  wrote,  "  Then  see 
ing  we  are  not  born  for  ourselves  but  each  to  help  other  . . . 
Seeing  honor  is  our  lives'  ambition  .  .  .  and  seeing  by  no 
means  would  we  be  abated  of  the  dignities  and  glories  of  our 
predecessors ;  let  us  imitate  their  virtues  to  be  worthily 
their  successors." 

Why  the  Puritans  colonized  New  England.  —  During  the 
period  from  1620  to  1640,  large  numbers  of  Englishmen 
migrated  to  that  part  of  America  now  known  as  New  Eng 
land.  These  emigrants  were  not  impelled  by  hope  of 
wealth,  or  ease,  or  pleasure.  They  were  called  Puritans 
because  they  wished  to  purify  the  Church  of  England  from 
what  seemed  to  them  great  abuses ;  and  the  purpose  of 
these  men  in  emigrating  to  America  was  to  lay  the  founda 
tions  of  a  state  built  upon  their  religious  principles.  These 
people  came  for  an  intangible  something  —  liberty  of  con 
science,  a  fuller  life  of  the  spirit  —  which  has  never  com 
manded  a  price  on  any  stock  exchange  in  the  world.  They 
looked  beyond 

"  Things  done  that  took  the  eye  and  had  the  price ; 
O'er  which,  from  level  stand, 
The  low  world  laid  its  hand, 
Found  straightway  to  its  mind,  could  value  in  a  trice." 

These  Puritans  had  been  more  than  one  century  in  the  mak 
ing.  We  hear  of  them  in  the  time  of  Wycliffe  (1324-1384). 
Their  religion  was  a  constant  command  to  put  the  unseen 
above  the  seen,  the  eternal  above  the  temporal,  to  satisfy 
the  aspiration  of  the  spirit.  James  I.  (reign,  1603-1625)  told 
them  that  he  would  harry  them  out  of  the  kingdom  unless 

I 


14  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

they  conformed  to  the  rites  of  the  Established  Church.     His 
son  and  successor  Charles  I.  (reign,  162 5- 1649)  called  to  his 
aid   Archbishop    Laud   (1573-1645),  a 
bigoted  official  of  that  church.     Laud 
hunted  the  dissenting  clergy  like  wild 
beasts,     threw     them     into     prison, 
whipped  them  in  the  pillory,  branded 
them,  slit  their  nostrils,  and  mutilated 
their  ears.    John  Cotton,  pastor  of  the 
church  of  Boston,  England,  was  told 
that  if  he  had  been    guilty  only  of 
an  infraction  of  certain  of  the  Ten 
Commandments,  he  might  have  been 
JOHN  COTTON  pardoned,  but  since    his  crime   was 

Puritanism,  he  must  suffer.     He  had  great  trouble  in  es 
caping  on  a  ship  bound  for  the  New  England  Boston. 

Professor  Tyler  says :  "  New  England  has  perhaps  never 
quite  appreciated  its  great  obligations  to  Archbishop  Laud. 
It  was  his  overmastering  hate  of  nonconformity,  it  was  the 
vigilance  and  vigor  and  consecrated  cruelty  with  which  he 
scoured  his  own  diocese  and  afterward  all  England,  and 
hunted  down  and  hunted  out  the  ministers  who  were 
committing  the  unpardonable  sin  of  dissent,  that  conferred 
upon  the  principal  colonies  of  New  England  their  ablest 
and  noblest  men." 

It  should  be  noted  that  the  Puritan  colonization  of  New 
England  took  place  in  a  comparatively  brief  space  of  time, 
during  the  twenty  years  from  1620  to  1640.  Until  1640 
persecution  drove  the  Puritans  to  New  England  in  multi 
tudes,  but  in  that  year  they  suddenly  stopped  coming. 
"  During  the  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  years  following 
that  date,  more  persons,  it  is  supposed,  went  back  from 
the  New  to  the  Old  England  than  came  from  the  Old  Eng- 


ELIZABETHAN  TRAITS  15 

land  to  the  New,"  says  Professor  Tyler.  The  year  1640 
marks  the  assembling  of  the  Long  Parliament,  which  finally 
brought  to  the  block  both  Archbishop  Laud  (1645)  and 
King  Charles  I.  (1649),  and  chose  the  great  Puritan,  Oliver 
Cromwell,  to  lead  the  Commonwealth. 

Elizabethan  Traits.  —  The  leading  men  in  the  colonization 
of  Virginia  and  New  England  were  born  in  the  reign  of 
Queen  Elizabeth  (1558-1603),  and  they  and  their  descend 
ants-showed  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  those  character 
istics  which  made  the  Elizabethan  age  preeminent 

In  the  first  place,  the  Elizabethans  possessed  initiative. 
This  power  consists,  first,  in  having  ideas,  and  secondly, 
in  passing  from  the  ideas  to  the  suggested  action.  Some 
people  merely  dream.  The  Elizabethans  dreamed  glorious 
dreams,  which  they  translated  into  action.  They  defeated 
the  Spanish  Armada ;  they  circumnavigated  the  globe ; 
they  made  it  possible  for  Shakespeare's  pen  to  mold  the 
thought  and  to  influence  the  actions  of  the  world. 

If  we  except  those  indentured  servants  and  apprentices 
who  came  to  America  merely  because  others  brought  them, 
we  shall  find  not  only  that  the  first  colonists  were  born  in  an 
age  distinguished  for  its  initiative,  but  also  that  they  came 
because  they  possessed  this  characteristic  in  a  greater  de 
gree  than  those  who  remained  behind.  It  was  easier  for 
the  majority  to  stay  with  their  friends ;  hence  England 
was  not  depopulated.  The  few  came,  those  who  had  suffi 
cient  initiative  to  cross  three  thousand  miles  of  unknown 
sea,  who  had  the  power  to  dream  dreams  of  a  new  com 
monwealth,  and  the  will  to  embody  those  dreams  in  action. 

In  the  second  place,  the  Elizabethans  were  ingenious, 
that  is,  they  were  imaginative  and  resourceful.  Impelled 
by  the  mighty  forces  of  the  Reformation  and  the  Revival 
of  Learning  which  the  England  of  Elizabeth  alone  felt  at 


1 6  COLONIAL   LITERATURE 

one  and  the  same  time,  the  Elizabethans  craved  and 
obtained  variety  of  experience,  which  kept  the  fountain- 
head  of  ingenuity  filled.  It  is  instructive  to  follow  the 
lives  of  Elizabethans  as  different  as  Sir  Philip  Sidney, 
William  Shakespeare,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  Captain  John 
Smith,  and  John  Winthrop,  and  to  note  the  varied  expe 
riences  of  each.  Yankee  ingenuity  had  an  Elizabethan 
ancestry.  The  hard  conditions  of  the  New  World  merely 
gave  an  opportunity  to  exercise  to  the  utmost  an  ingenuity 
which  the  colonists  brought  with  them. 

In  the  third  place,  the  Elizabethans  were  unusually 
democratic ;  that  is,  the  different  classes  mingled  together 
in  a  marked  degree,  more  than  in  modern  England,  more 
even  than  in  the  United  States  to-day.  This  intermin 
gling  was  due  in  part  to  increased  travel,  to  the  desire  born 
of  the  New  Learning  to  live  as  varied  and  as  complete  a 
life  as  possible,  and  to  the  absence  of  overspecialization 
among  individuals.  This  chance  for  varied  experience 
with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  enabled  Shakespeare 
to  speak  to  all  humanity.  All  England  was  represented 
in  his  plays.  When  the  Rev.  Thomas  Hooker,  born  in  the 
last  half  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  was  made  pastor  at  Hartford, 
Connecticut,  he  suggested  to  his  flock  a  democratic  form 
of  government  much  like  that  under  which  we  now  live. 

Let  us  remember  that  American  life  and  literature  owe 
their  most  interesting  traits  to  these  three  Elizabethan 
qualities — initiative,  ingenuity,  and  democracy.  Let  us 
not  forget  that  the  Cambridge  University  graduate,  the 
cooper,  cloth-maker,  printer,  and  blacksmith  had  the  initia 
tive  to  set  out  for  the  New  World,  the  ingenuity  to  deal 
with  its  varied  exigencies,  and  the  democratic  spirit  that 
enabled  them  to  work  side  by  side,  no  matter  how  diverse 
their  former  trades,  modes  of  life,  and  social  condition. 


CAPTAIN  JOHN   SMITH 


CAPTAIN  JOHN  SMITH,  1579-1631 

The  hero  of  the  Jamestown  colony,  and  its  savior  during 
the  first  two  years,  was  Captain  John  Smith,  born  in  Wil- 
loughby,  Lincolnshire,  in  1579,  twenty-four  years  before 
the  death  of  Elizabeth  and  thirty-seven  before  the  death  of 
Shakespeare.  Smith  was  a  man  of  Elizabethan  stamp,  — 
active,  ingenious,  imaginative,  craving  new  experiences. 
While  a  mere  boy,  he  could  not  stand  the  tediousness  of 
ordinary  life,  and  so  betook  himself  to  the  forest  where  he 
could  hunt  and  play  knight. 


jft  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

In  the  first  part  of  his  young  manhood  he  crossed  the 
Channel,  voyaged  in  the  Mediterranean,  fought  the  Turks, 
killing  three  of  them  in  single  combat,  was  taken  prisoner 
and  enslaved  by  the  Tartars,  killed  his  inhuman  master, 
escaped  into  Russia,  went  thence  through  Europe  to 
Africa,  was  in  desperate  naval  battles,  returned  to  Eng 
land,  sailing  thence  for  Virginia,  which  he  reached  at  the 
age  of  twenty-eight. 

He  soon  became  president  of  the  Jamestown  colony  and 
labored  strenuously  for  its  preservation.  The  first  prod 
uct  of  his  pen  in  America  was  A  True  Relation  of  Vir 
ginia,  written  in  1608,  the  year  in  which  John  Milton  was 
born.  The  last  work  written  by  Smith  in  America  is  en 
titled  :  A  Map  of  Virginia,  with  a  Description  of  the  Coun 
try,  the  Commodities,  People,  Government,  and  Religion. 
His  description  of  the  Indians  shows  his  capacity  for 
quickly  noting  their  traits  :  — 

"  They  are  inconstant  in  everything,  but  what  fear  constraineth  them 
to  keep.  Crafty,  timorous,  quick  of  apprehension  and  very  ingenious. 
Some  are  of  disposition  fearful,  some  bold,  most  cautious,  all  savage. 
Generally  covetous  of  copper,  beads,  and  such  like  trash.  They  are 
soon  moved  to  anger,  and  so  malicious  that  they  seldom  forget  an  in 
jury  :  they  seldom  steal  one  from  another,  lest  their  :onjurors  should 
reveal  it,  and  so  they  be  pursued  and  punished.  That  they  are  thus 
feared  is  certain,  but  that  any  can  reveal  their  offences  by  conjuration  I 
am  doubtful." 

bmith  has  often  been  accused  of  boasting,  and  some 
have  said  that  he  was  guilty  of  great  exaggeration  or  some 
thing  worse,  but  it  is  certain  that  he  repeatedly  braved 
hardships,  extreme  dangers,  and  captivity  among  the  In 
dians  to  provide  food  for  the  colony  and  to  survey  Virginia. 
After  carefully  editing  Captain  John  Smith's  Works  in  a 
volume  of  983  pages,  Professor  Edwin  Arber  says :  "  For 


CAPTAIN  JOHN   SMITH  19 

our  own  part,  beginning  with  doubtfulness  and  wariness 
we  have  gradually  come  to  the  unhesitating  conviction, 
not  only  of  Smith's  truthfulness,  but  also  that,  in  regard 
to  all  personal  matters,  he  systematically  understates  rather 
than  exaggerates  anything  he  did." 

Although  by  far  the  greater  part  cf  Smith's  literary 
work  was  done  after  he  returned  to  England,  yet  his  two 
booklets  written  in  America  entitle  him  to  a  place  in  colo 
nial  literature.  He  had  the  Elizabethan  love  of  achievement, 
and  he  records  his  admiration  for  those  whose  '  pens  writ 
what  their  swords  did.'  He  was  not  an  artist  with  his  pen, 
but  our  early  colonial  literature  is  the  richer  for  his  rough 
narrative  and  for  the  description  of  Virginia  and  the  Indians. 

In  one  sense  he  gave  the  Indian  to  literature,  and  that 
is  his  greatest  achievement  in  literary  history.  Who  has 
not  heard  the  story  of  his  capture  by  the  Indians,  of  his 
rescue  from  torture  and  death,  by  the  beautiful  Indian 
maiden,  Pocahontas,  of  her  risking  her  life  to  save  him  a 
second  time  from  Indian  treachery,  of  her  bringing  corn 
and  preserving  the  colony  from  famine,  of  her  visit  to 
England  in  1616,  a  few  weeks  after  the  death  of  Shake 
speare,  of  her  royal  reception  as  a  princess,  the  daughter 
of  an  Indian  king,  of  Smith's  meeting  her  again  in  London, 
where  their  romantic  story  aroused  the  admiration  of  the 
court  and  the  citizens  for  the  brown-eyed  princess  ?  It 
would  be  difficult  to  say  how  many  tales  of  Indian  adven 
ture  this  romantic  story  of  Pocahontas  has  suggested. 
It  has  the  honor  of  being  the  first  of  its  kind  written  in 
the  English  tongue. 

Did  Pocahontas  actually  rescue  Captain  Smith  ?  In  his 
account  of  his  adventures,  written  in  Virginia  in  1608,  he 
does  not  mention  this  rescue,  but  in  his  later  writings  he 
relates  it  as  an  actual  occurrence.  When  Pocahontas 


20  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

visited  London,  this  story  was  current,  and  there  is  no 
evidence  that  she  denied  it.  Professor  Arber  says,  "  To 
deny  the  truth  of  the  Jrocahontas  incident  is  to  create  more 
difficulties  than  are  involved  in  its  acceptance."  But 
literature  does  not  need  to  ask  whether  the  story  of  Ham 
let  or  of  Pocahontas  is  true.  If  this  unique  story  of 
American  adventure  is  a  product  of  Captain  Smith's  crea 
tive  imagination,  the  literary  critic  must  admit  the  captain's 
superior  ability  in  producing  a  tale  of  such  vitality.  If  the 
story  is  true,  then  our  literature  does  well  to  remember 
whose  pen  made  this  truth  one  of  the  most  persistent 
of  our  early  romantic  heritages.  He  is  as  well  known 
for  the  story  of  Pocahontas  as  for  all  of  his  other  achieve 
ments.  The  man  who  saved  the  Virginia  colony  and  who 
first  suggested  a  new  field  to  the  writer  of  American 
romance  is  rightly  considered  one  of  the  most  striking  fig 
ures  in  our  early  history,  even  if  he  did  return  to  England 
in  less  than  three  years  and  end  his  days  there  in  1631. 

LITERARY  ACTIVITY  IN  VIRGINIA  COLONY 

A  Possible  Suggestion  for  Shakespeare's  Tempest. —Wil 
liam  Strachey,  a  contemporary  of  Shakespeare  and  secre 
tary  of  the  Virginian  colony,  wrote  at  Jamestown  and  sent 
to  London  in  1610  the  manuscript  of  A  True  Repertory  of 
the  Wrack  and  Redemption  of  Sir  Thomas  Gates,  Kt.,  upon 
and  from  the  Islands  of  the  Bermudas.  This  is  a  story  of 
shipwreck  on  the  Bermudas  and  of  escape  in  small  boats. 
The  book  is  memorable  for  the  description  of  a  storm  at 
sea,  and  it  is  possible  that  it  may  even  have  furnished  sug 
gestions  to  Shakespeare  for  The  Tempest.  If  so,  it  is  inter 
esting  to  compare  these  with  what  they  produced  in  Shake 
speare's  mind.  Strachey  tells  how  "  the  sea  swelled  above 


LITERARY  ACTIVITY  IN  VIRGINIA 


21 


the  clouds  and  gave  battle  unto  heaven."  He  speaks  of 
"an  apparition  of  a  little  round  light,  like  a  faint  star, 
trembling  and  streaming  along  with  a  sparkling  blaze,  half 
the  height  upon  the  main  mast,  and  shooting  sometimes  from 
shroud  to  shroud."  Ariel  says  to  Prospero  :  — 

"  I  boarded  the  king's  ship  ;  now  on  the  beak, 
Now  in  the  waist,  the  deck,  in  every  cabin, 
I  flam'd  amazement :     Sometimes  Fid  divide, 
And  burn  in  many  places  ;  on  the  topmast, 
The  yards,  and  bowsprit,  would  I  flame  distinctly, 
Then  meet  and  join." 

Strachey  voices  the  current  belief  that  the  Bermudas 
were  harassed  by  tempests,  devils,  wicked  spirits,  and 
other  fearful  objects.  Shakespeare  has  Ferdinand  with 
fewer  words  intensify  Strachey's  picture  :  — 

«  Hell  is  empty, 
And  all  the  devils  are  here." 

The  possibility  that  incidents  arising  out  of  Virginian 
colonization    may    have    turned     Shake 
speare's   attention   to    "the   still  vex'd 
Bermoothes"  and  given  him  sugges 
tions  for  one  of  his  great  plays  lends 
added  interest   to    Strachey's    Trzie 
Repertory.     But,  aside  from  Shake 
speare,  this  has  an  interest  of  its  own. 
It  has  the  Anglo-Saxon  touch  in   de 
picting  the  wrath  of  the  sea,  and  it 
shows   the   character   of    the    early 
American   colonists  who  braved   a 
wrath  like  this. 

Poetry  in  the  Virginia  Colony. — 

_  "!_  ,  f         ^         i        •  GEORGE    SANDYS 

George  Sandys  (1577-1644),  during 

his  stay  in  the  colony  as  its  treasurer,  translated  ten  books 


22  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

of  Ovid's  Metamorphoses,  sometimes  working  by  the  light 
of  a  pine  knot.  This  work  is  rescued  from  the  class  of 
mere  translation  by  its  literary  art  and  imaginative  inter 
pretation,  and  it  possesses  for  us  an  additional  interest 
because  of  its  nativity  amid  such  surroundings.  Two  lines 
telling  how  Philemon 

"  Took  down  a  flitch  of  bacon  with  a  prung, 
That  long  had  in  the  smoky  chimney  hung," 

show  that  his  environment  aided  him  somewhat  in  the 
translation.  He  himself  says  of  this  version  that  it  was 
"  bred  in  the  new  world,  whereof  it  cannot  but  participate, 
especially  having  wars  and  tumults  to  bring  it  to  light,  in 
stead  of  the  muses."  He  was  read  by  both  Dryden  and 
Pope  in  their  boyhood,  and  the  form  of  their  verse  shows 
his  influence. 

The  only  original  poem  which  merits  our  attention  in 
the  early  Virginian  colony  was  found  soon  after  the  Revo 
lutionary  War  in  a  collection  of  manuscripts,  known  as  the 
Burwell  Papers.  This  poem  is  an  elegy  on  the  death  of 
Nathaniel  Bacon  (1676),  a  young  Virginian  patriot  and 
military  hero,  who  resisted  the  despotic  governor,  Sir 
William  Berkeley.  It  was  popularly  believed  that  Bacon's 
mysterious  death  was  due  to  poison.  An  unknown  friend 
wrote  the  elegy  in  defense  of  Bacon  and  his  rebellion. 
These  lines  from  that  elegy  show  a  strength  unusual  in 

colonial  poetry :  — 

u  Virginia's  foes, 

To  whom,  for  secret  crimes,  just  vengeance  ®wes 
Deserved  plagues,  dreading  their  just  desert, 
Corrupted  death  by  Paracelsian  art, 
Him  to  destroy  .  .  . 
Our  arms,  though  ne'er  so  strong, 
Will  want  the  aid  of  his  commanding  tongue, 
Which  conquered  more  than  Caesar." 


LITERARY  ACTIVITY  IN  VIRGINIA  23 

Descriptions  of  Virginia.  —  Robert  Beverly,  clerk  of  the 
Council  of  Virginia,  published  in  London  in  1705  a  History 
and  Present  State  of  Virginia.  This  is  to-day  a  readable 
account  of  the  colony  and  its  people  in  the  first  part  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  This  selection  shows  that  in  those 
early  days  Virginians  were  noted  for  what  has  come  to  be 
known  as  southern  hospitality  :  — 

"  The  inhabitants  are  very  courteous  to  travellers,  who  need  no  other 
recommendation,  but  the  being  human  creatures.  A  stranger  has  no 
more  to  do,  but  to  inquire  upon  the  road  where  any  gentleman  or  good 
housekeeper  lives,  and  there  he  may  depend  upon  being  received  with 
hospitality.  This  good  nature  is  so  general  among  their  people,  that 
the  gentry,  when  they  go  abroad,  order  their  principal  servant  to  enter 
tain  all  visitors  with  everything  the  plantation  affords.  And  the  poor 
planters  who  have  but  one  bed,  will  very  often  sit  up,  or  lie  upon  a  form 
or  couch  all  night,  to  make  room  for  a  weary  traveller  to  repose  himself 
after  his  journey." 

Colonel  William  Byrd  (1674-1744),  a  wealthy  Virginian, 
wrote  a  History  of  the  Dividing  Line 
run    in    the   Year    1728.       He    was 
commissioned  by  the  Virginian  col 
ony  to  run  a  line  between   it   and 
North    Carolina.      This   book   is   a 
record  of  personal  experiences,  and 
is  as  interesting  as  its  title  is  for 
bidding.       This    selection     de 
scribes     the     Dismal     Swamp, 
through  which  the  line  ran :  — 

"  Since  the  surveyors  had  entered  the 
Dismal  they  had  lai'd  eyes  on  no  living 
creature  ;  neither  bird  nor  beast,  insect 
nor  reptile  came  in  view.  Doubtless  the 

eternal  shade  that  broods  over  this  mighty  bog  and  hinders  the  sun 
beams  from  blessing  the  ground,  makes  it  an  uncomfortable  habitation 
for  anything  that  kas  life.  Not  so  much  as  a  Zealand  frog  could  endure 


24  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

so  aguish  a  situation.  It  had  one  beauty,  however,  that  delighted  the 
eye,  though  at  the  expense  of  all  the  other  senses  :  the  moisture  of  the 
soil  preserves  a  continual  verdure,  and  makes  every  plant  an  evergreen, 
but  at  the  same  time  the  foul  damps  ascend  without  ceasing,  corrupt  the 
air,  and  render  it  unfit  for  respiration.  Not  even  a  turkey  buzzard  will 
venture  to  fly  ove*  it,  no  more  than  the  Italian  vultures  will  fly  over  the 
filthy  lake  Avernus  or  the  birds  in  the  Holy  Land  over  the  salt  sea 
where  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  formerly  stood. 

"In  these  sad  circumstances  the  kindest  thing  we  could  do  for  our 
suffering  friends  was  to  give  them  a  place  in  the  Litany.  Our  chaplain 
for  his  part  did  his  office  and  rubbed  us  up  with  a  seasonable  sermon. 
This  was  quite  a  new  thing  to  our  brethren  of  North  Carolina,  who  live 
in  a  climate  where  no  clergyman  can  breathe,  any  more  than  spiders  in 
Ireland." 

These  two  selections  show  that  American  literature,  even 
before  the  Revolution,  came  to  be  something  more  than  an 
imitation  of  English  literature.  They  are  the  product  of 
our  soil,  and  no  critic  could  say  txat  they  might  as  well 
have  been  written  in  London  as  in  Virginia.  They  also 
show  how  much  eighteenth-century  prose  had  improved 
in  form.  Even  in  England,  modern  prose  may  almost  be 
said  to  begin  with  John  Dryden,  who  died  at  the  beginning 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  addition  to  improvement 
in  form,  we  may  note  the  appearance  of  a  new  quality  -  - 
humor.  Our  earliest  writers  have  few  traces  of  humor 
because  colonization  was  a  serious  life  and  death  affair  to 
them. 

Different  Lines  of  Development  of  Virginia  and  New  Kng~ 
land.  — As  we  now  go  back  more  than  a  hundred  years  to 
the  founding  of  the  Plymouth  colony  in  1620,  we  may  note 
that  Virginia  and  New  England  developed  along  different 
lines.  We  shall  find  more  dwellers  in  towns,  more  democ 
racy  and  mingling  of  all  classes,  more  popular  education, 
and  more  literature  in  New  England.  The  ruling  classes 
of  Virginia  were  mostly  descendants  of  the  Cavaliers  who 


LITERARY  ACTIVITY  IN  VIRGINIA  25 

had  sympathized  with  monarchy,  while  the  Puritans  had 
fought  the  Stuart  kings  and  had  approved  a  Common 
wealth.  In  Virginia  a  wealthy  class  of  landed  gentry  came 
to  be  an  increasing  power  in  the  political  history  of  cha 
country.  The  ancestors  of  George  Washington  and  many 
others  who  did  inestimable  service  to  the  nation  were 
among  this  class,  It  was  long  the  fashion  for  this  aristoc 
racy  to  send  their  children  to  England  to  be  educated, 
while  the  Puritans  trained  theirs  at  home 

New  England  started  a  printing  press,  and  was  printing 
books   by  1640.     In    1671    Sir  William 
Berkeley,  governor  of  Virginia,  wrote,  "  I 
thank  God  there  are  no 
free  schools,  nor  printing, 
and  I  hope  we  shall  not 
have   these    hundred    years ; 
for  learning  has  brought  dis 
obedience    and    heresy    and 
sects  into  the  world,  and  print 
ing  has  developed  them." 

Producers  of  literature  need 
the  stimulus  of  town  life,  The 
South  was  chiefly  agricultural. 
The  plantations  were  large,  and  EARLY  PRINTING  PRESS 

the  people  lived  in  far  greater  isolation  than  in  New  Eng 
land,  where  not  only  me  town,  but  more  especially  the 
church,  developed  a  close  social  unit. 

One  other  reason  served  to  make  it  difficult  for  a  poet  of 
the  plowman  type,  like  Robert  Burns,  or  for  an  author 
from  the  general  working  class,  like  Benjamin  Franklin, 
to  arise  in  the  South.  Labor  was  thought  degrading,  and 
the  laborer  did  not  find  the  «ame  chance  as  at  the  North 
to  learn  from  close  association  with  the  intelligent  class. 


26  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

The  reason  for  this  is  given  by  Colonel  William  Byrd, 
from  whom  we  have  quoted  in  the  preceding  section.  He 
wrote  in  1736  of  the  leading  men  of  the  South :  — 

"  They  import  so  many  negroes  hither,  that  I  fear  this  Colony  will 
some  time  or  other  be  confirmed  by  the  name  of  New  Guinea.  I  am 
sensible  of  many  bad  consequences  of  multiplying  these  Ethiopians 
amongst  us.  They  blow  up  the  pride  and  ruin  the  industry  of  our 
white  people,  who  seeing  a  rank  of  poor  creatures  below  them,  detest 
work,  for  fear  it  should  make  them  look  like  slaves." 


WILLIAM    BRADFORD,   1590-1657 

William  Bradford  was  born  in  1590  in  the  Pilgrim  dis 
trict  of  England,  in  the  Yorkshire  village  of  Austerfield, 
two  miles  north  of  Scrooby.  While  a  child,  he  attended 
the  religious  meetings  of  the  Puritans.  At  the  age  of 
eighteen  he  gave  up  a  good  position  in  the  post  service 
of  England,  and  crossed  to  Holland  to  escape  religious 
persecution.  His  History  of  Plymouth  Plantation  is  not 
a  record  of  the  Puritans  as  a  whole,  but  only  of  that  branch 
known  as  the  Pilgrims,  who  left  England  for  Holland  in 
1607  and  1608,  and  who,  after  remaining  there  for  nearly 
twelve  years,  had  the  initiative  to  be  the  first  of  their  band 
to  come  to  the  New  World,  and  to  settle  at  Plymouth  in 
1620. 

For  more  than  thirty  years  he  was  governor  of  the 
Plymouth  colony,  and  he  managed  its  affairs  with  the  discre 
tion  of  a  Washington  and  the  zeal  of  a  Cromwell.  His 
History  tells  the  story  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  from  the 
time  of  the  formation  of  their  two  congregations  in  Eng 
land,  until  1647. 

In  1897  the  United  States  for  the  first  time  came  into 
possession  of  the  manuscript  of  this  famous  History  of 


WILLIAM  BRADFORD  27 

Plymouth  Plantation,  which  had  in  some  mysterious  man 
ner  been  taken  from  Boston  in  colonial  times  and  had 
found  its  way  into  the  library  of  the  Lord  Bishop  of 
London.  Few  of  the  English  seem  to  have  read  it.  Even 
its  custodian  miscalled  it  The  Log  of  the  Mayflower,  al 
though  after  the  ship  finally  cleared  from  England,  only 
five  incidents  of  the  voyage  are  briefly  mentioned:  the 
death  of  a  young  seaman  who  cursed  the  Pilgrims  on  the 


GDr  fifirtioK  nJicn 


orte  ^ 


fa 


FACSIMILE  OF  FIRST  PARAGRAPH   OF   BRADFORD'S    "HISTORY  OF  PLYMOUTH 
PLANTATION  " 

voyage  and  made  sport  of  their  misery ;  the  cracking  of 
one  of  the  main  beams  of  the  ship ;  the  washing  overboard 
in  a  storm  of  a  good  young  man  who  was  providentially 
saved ;  the  death  of  a  servant ;  and  the  sight  of  Cape  Cod. 
On  petition,  the  Lord  Bishop  of  London  generously  gave 
this  manuscript  of  270  pages  to  the  Commonwealth  of 
Massachusetts.  In  a  speech  at  the  time  of  its  formal  re 
ception,  Senator  Hoar  eloquently  summed  up  the  subject 
matter  of  the  volume  as  follows:  — 

"I  do  not  think  many  Americans  will  gaze  upon  it  without  a  little 
trembling  of  the  lips  and  a  little  gathering  of  mist  in  the  eyes,  as  they 
think  of  the  story  of  suffering,  of  sorrow,  of  peril,  of  exile,  of  death,  and 
of  lofty  triumph  which  that  book  tells,  —  which  the  hand  of  the  great 
leader  and  founder  of  America  has  traced  on  those  pages.  There  is 


28  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

nothing  like  it  in  human  annals  since  the  story  of  Bethlehem.  These 
Englishmen  and  English  women  going  out  from  their  homes  in  beauti 
ful  Lincoln  and  York,  wife  separated  from  husband  and  mother  from 
child  in  that  hurried  embarkation  for  Holland,  pursued  to  the  beach  by 
English  horsemen ;  the  thirteen  years  of  exile ;  the  life  at  Amsterdam, 
'in  alley  foul  and  lane  obscure1 ;  the  dwelling  at  Leyden  ;  the  embarka 
tion  at  Delfthaven ;  the  farewell  of  Robinson ;  the  terrible  voyage 
across  the  Atlantic;  the  compact  in  the  harbor;  the  landing  on  the 
rock ;  the  dreadful  first  winter ;  the  death  roll  of  more  than  half  the 
number ;  the  days  of  suffering  and  of  famine  ;  the  wakeful  night,  listen 
ing  for  the  yell  of  wild  beast  and  the  war  whoop  of  the  savage ;  the 
building  of  the  State  on  those  sure  foundations  which  no  wave  or 
tempest  has  ever  shaken ;  the  breaking  of  the  new  light ;  the  dawning 
of  the  new  day  ;  the  beginning  of  the  new  life  ;  the  enjoyment  of  peace 
with  liberty,  —  of  all  these  things  this  is  the  original  record  by  the  hand 
of  our  beloved  father  and  founder." 

In  addition  to  giving  matter  of  unique  historical  impor 
tance,  Bradford  entertains  his  readers  with  an  account  of 
Squanto,  the  Pilgrims'  tame  Indian,  of  Miles  Standish  cap 
turing  the  "  lord  of  misrule  "  at  Merrymount,  and  of  the 
failure  of  an  experiment  in  tilling  the  soil  in  common. 
Bradford  says  that  there  was  immediate  improvement 
when  each  family  received  the  full  returns  from  working 
its  own  individual  plot  of  ground.  He  thus  philosophizes 
about  this  social  experiment  of  the  Pilgrims :  — 

"  The  experience  that  was  had  in  this  common  course  and  condition, 
tried  sundry  years,  and  that  amongst  godly  and  sober  men,  may  well 
evince  the  vanity  of  that  conceit  of  Plato's  and  other  ancients,  applauded 
by  some  of  later  times  ; that  the  taking  away  of  property  and  bring 
ing  in  community  into  a  common  wealth  would  make  them  happy  and 
flourishing.  .  .  .  Let  none  object  thi?  is  men's  corruption,  and  nothing 
to  the  course  itself.  I  answer,  seeing  all  men  have  this  corruption  in 
them,  God  in  his  wisdom  saw  another  course  fitter  for  them." 

America  need  not  be  ashamed  of  either  the  form  or  the 
subject  matter  of  her  early  colonial  prose  in  comparison 
with  that  produced  in  England  at  the  same  time. 


JOHN   WINTHROP 


JOHN  WINTHROP,  1588-1649 

On  March  29  1630,  John  Winthrop  made  the  first  entry 
in  hisy^/r;/^/on  board  the  ship  Arbella,  before  she  left  the 
Isle  of  Wight  for  Massachusetts  Bay,  This  Journal  was  to 
continue  until  a  few  months  before  his  death  in  1649,  and 
was  in  after  times  to  receive  the  dignified  name  of  History 
of  New  England,  although  it  might  more  properly  still  be 
called  his  Journal,  as  its  latest  editor  does  indeed  style  it. 


30  COLONIAL   LITERATURE 

John  Winthrop  was  born  in  the  County  of  Suffolk, 
England,  in  1588,  the  year  of  the  defeat  of  the  Span 
ish  Armada.  He  was  a  wealthy,  well-educated  Puritan, 
the  owner  of  broad  estates.  As  he  paced  the  deck  of  the 
Arbella,  the  night  before  he  sailed  for  Massachusetts,  ha 
knew  that  he  was  leaving  comfort,  home,  .friends,  position, 
all  for  liberty  of  conscience.  Few  men  have  ever  volun 
tarily  abandoned  more  than  Winthrop,  or  clung  more 
tenaciously  to  their  ideals. 

After  a  voyage  lasting  more  than  two  months,  he 
settled  with  a  large  number  of  Puritans  on  the  site  of 
modern  Boston.  For  the  principal  part  of  the  time  from 
his  arrival  in  1630  until  his  death  in  1649,  he  served  as 
governor  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Colony.  Not  many 
civil  leaders  of  any  age  have  shown  more  sagacity,  patriot 
ism,  and  tireless  devotion  to  duty  than  John  Winthrop. 

Y{.\s  Journal  is  a  record  of  contemporaneous  events  from 
1630  to  1648.  The  earlyxpart  of  this  work  might  with 
some  justice  have  been  called  the  Log  of  the  Arbella. 


FACSIMILE   OF   BEGINNING   OF  MS.   OF  WINTHROP'S   "JOURNAL 


JOHN   WINTHROP  31 

TRANSLITERATION  OF  FACSIMILE  OF  WINTHROP'S  "JOURNAL" 

"ANNO  DOMINI  1630,  MARCH  29,  MONDAY. 
"EASTER  MONDAY. 

"  Riding  at  the  Cowes,  near  the  Isle  of  Wight,  in  the  Arbella,  a  ship 
of  350  tons,  whereof  Capt.  Peter  Milborne  was  master,  being  manned 
with  52  seamen,  and  28  pieces  of  ordnance,  (tke  wind  coming  to  the  N. 
by  W.  the  evening  before,)  in  the  morning  there  came  aboard  us  Mr. 
Cradock,  the  late  governor,  and  the  masters  of  his  2  ships,  Capt.  John 
Lowe,  master  of  the  Ambrose,  and  Mr.  Nicholas  Hurlston,  master  of 
the  Jewel,  and  Mr.  Thomas  Beecher,  master  of  the  Talbot" 

The  entry  for  Monday,  April  12,  1630,  is  :  — 

"The  wind  more  large  to  the  N.  a  stiff  gale,  with  fair  weather.  In 
the  afternoon  less  wind,  and  our  people  began  to  grow  well  again.  Our 
children  and  others,  that  were  sick  and  lay  groaning  in  the  cabins,  we 
fetched  out,  and  having  stretched  a  rope  from  the  steerage  to  the  main 
mast,  we  made  them  stand,  some  pf  one  side  and  some  of  the  other,  and 
sway  it  up  and  down  till  they  were  warm,  and  by  this  means  they  soon 
grew  well  and  merry." 

The  following  entry  for  June  5,  1644,  reflects  an  inter 
esting  side  light  on  the  government  of  Harvard,  our  first 
American  college :  — 

"  Two  of  our  ministers'  sons,  being  students  in  the  college,  robbed 
two  dwelling  houses  in  the  night  ofsome  fifteen  pounds.  Being  found 
out,  they  were  ordered  by  the  governors  of  the  college  to  he  there 
whipped,  which  was  performed  by  the  president  himself — yet  they 
were  about  twent^  years  of  age  ;  and  after  they  were  brought  into  the 
court  and  ordered  to  twofold  satisfaction,  ©r  to  serve  so  long  for  it. 
We  had  yet  no  particular  punishment  for  burglary." 

Another  entry  for  1644  tells  of  one  William  Franklin, 
condemned  for  causing  the  death  of  his  apprentice  :  — 

"The  case  was  this.  He  had  taken  to  apprentice  one  Nathaniel 
Sewell,  one  of  those  children  sent  over  the  last  year  for  the  country  ; 
the  boy  had  the  scurvy  and  was  withal  very  noisome,  and  otherwise  ill 
disposed.  His  master  used  him  with  continual  rigour  and  unmerciful 
correction,  and  exposed  him  many  times  to  much  cold  and  wet  in  the 


32  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

winter  season,  and  used  divers  acts  of  rigour  towards  him,  as  hanging 
him  in  the  chimney,  etc.,  and  the  boy  being  very  poor  and  weak,  he 
tied  him  upon  an  horse  and  so  brought  him  (sometimes  sitting  and 
sometimes  hanging  down)  to  Boston,  being  five  miles  off,  to  the 
magistrates,  and  by  the  way  the  boy  calling  much  for  water,  would 
give  him  none,  though  he  came  close  by  it,  so  as  the  boy  was  near  dead 
when  he  came  to  Boston,  and  died  within  a  few  hours  after." 

Winthrop  relates  how  Franklin  appealed  the  case  when 
he  was  found  guilty,  and  how  the  Puritans  inflicted  the 
death  penalty  on  him  after  searching  the  Bible  for  a  rule 
on  which  to  base  their  decision.  The  most  noticeable 
qualities  of  this  terrible  story  are  its  simplicity,  its  repression, 
its  lack  of  striving  after  effect.  Winthrop,  Bradford,  and 
Bunyan  had  learned  from  the  1611  version  of  the  Bible  to 
be  content  to  present  any  situation  as  simply  as  possible 
and  to  rely  on  the  facts  themselves  to  secure  the  effect. 

Winthrop's  finest  piece  of  prose,  Concerning  Liberty, 
appears  in  an  entry  for  the  year  1645.  He  defines  liberty 
as  the  power  "to  do  that  which  is  good,  just,  and  honest. 
This  liberty  you  are  to  stand  for,  with  the  hazard,  not  only 
of  your  goods,  but  of  your  lives,  if  need  be."  Winthrop 
saw  clearly  what  many  since  his  day  have  failed  to  see, 
that  a  government  conducted  by  the  people  could  not 
endure,  if  liberty  meant  more  than  this. 

Winthrop's  Journal  records  almost  anything  which 
seemed  important  to  the  colonists.  Thus,  he  tells  about 
storms,  fires,  peculiar  deaths  of  animals,  crimes,  trials, 
Indians,  labor  troubles,  arrival  of  ships,  trading  expeditions, 
troubles  with  England  about  the  charter,  politics,  church 
matters,  events  that  would  point  a  moral,  like  the  selfish 
refusal  of  the  authorities  to  loan  a  quantity  of  gunpowder 
to  the  Plymouth  colony  and  the  subsequent  destruction  of 
that  same  powder  by  an  explosion,  or  the  drowning  of  a 


THE  RELIGIOUS  IDEAL  33 

child  in  the  well  while  the  parents  were  visiting  on  Sun 
day.  In  short,  this  Journal  gives  valuable  information 
about  the  civil,  religious,  and  domestic  life  of  the  early 
days  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Colony.  The  art  of  mod 
ern  prose  writing  was  known  neither  in  England  nor  in 
America  in  Winthrop's  time.  The  wonder  is  that  he  told 
the  story  of  this  colony  in  such  good  form  and  that  he 
still  holds  the  interest  of  the  reader  so  well. 


THE  RELIGIOUS  IDEAL 

William  Bradford  and  John  Winthrop  were  governors  of 
two  religious  commonwealths.  We  must  not  forget  that  the 
Puritans  came  to  America  to  secure  a  higher  form  of  spiritual 
life.  In  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  it  was  thought  that  the 
Revival  of  Learning  would  cure  all  ills  and  unlock  the  gates 
of  happiness.  This  hope  had  met  with  disappointment. 
Then  Puritanism  came,  and  ushered  in  a  new  era  of  spir 
itual  aspiration  for  something  better,  nobler,  and  more 
satisfying  than  mere  intellectual  attainments  or  wealth  or 
earthly  power  had  been  able  to  secure. 

The  Puritans  chose  the  Bible  as  the  guidebook  to  their 
Promised  Land.  The  long  sermons  to  which  they  listened 
were  chiefly  biblical  expositions.  The  Puritans  considered 
the  saving  of  the  soul  the  most  important  matter,  and  they 
neglected  whatever  form  of  culture  did  not  directly  tend 
toward  that  result.  They  thought  that  entertaining  read 
ing  and  other  forms  of  amusement  were  contrivances  of  the 
devil  to  turn  the  soul's  attention  away  from  the  Bible.  Even 
beauty  and  art  were  considered  handmaids  of  the  Evil  One. 
The  Bible  was  read,  reread,  and  constantly  studied,  and  it 
took  the  place  of  secular  poetry  and  prose. 

The  New  England  Puritan  believed  in  the  theology  of 


24  COLONIAL   LITERATURE 

Joh'n  Calvin,  who  died   in    1564.     His   creed,    known    as 
Calvinism,  emphasized  the  importance  of  the  individual,  of 

life's    continuous    moral 
struggle,    which    would 


or  hell  for  all   eternity. 

LETTER  »A».N   "NEW   ENGLAND   PR.MER"  In      *hC       NeW       England 

Primer,     the      children 

were  taught  the  first  article  of  belief,  as  they  learned  the 
letter  A  :  — 

"  In  Adam's  fall, 
We  sinned  all." 

Calvinism  stressed  the  doctrine  of  foreordination,  that  cer 
tain  ones,  "  the  elect,"  had  been  foreordained  to  be  saved. 
Thomas  Shepard  (1605-1649),  one  of  the  great  Puritan 
clergy,  fixed  the  mathematical  ratio  of  the  damned  to  the 
elect  as  "  a  thousand  to  one."  On  the  physical  side,  scien 
tists  have  pointed  out  a  close  correspondence  between  Cal 
vin's  creed  and  the  theory  of  evolution,  which  emphasizes 
the  desperate  struggle  resulting  from  the  survival  of  the 
fittest.  The  " fittest "  are  the  "elect";  those  who  perish 
in  the  contest,  the  "damned."  In  the  evolutionary 
struggle,  only  the  few  survive,  while  untold  numbers  of 
the  unfit,  no  matter  whether  seeds  of  plants,  eggs  of  fish, 
human  beings,  or  any  other  form  of  life,  go  to  the  wall. 

In  spite  of  the  apparent  contradiction  between  free  will 
and  foreordination,  each  individual  felt  himself  fully  re 
sponsible  for  the  saving  of  his  soul.  A  firm  belief  in  this 
tremendous  responsibility  made  each  one  rise  the  stronger 
to  meet  the  other  responsibilities  of  life.  Civil  responsibil 
ity  seemed  easier  to  one  reared  in  this  school.  The  initia 
tive  bequeathed  by  Elizabethan  times  was  increased  by  the 
Puritans'  religion. 


THE  RELIGIOUS  IDEAL  35 

Although  there  were  probably  as  many  university  men 
in  proportion  to  the  population  in  early  colonial  Massa 
chusetts  as  in  England,  the  strength  and  direction  of  their 
religious  ideals  helped  to  turn  their  energy  into  activities 
outside  the  field  of  pure  literature.  In  course  of  time,  how 
ever,  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  appeared  to  give  lasting  literary 
expression  to  this  life. 

The  New  England  Clergy.  —  The  clergy  occupied  a 
leading  place  in  both  the  civil  and  religious  life  of  New 
England.  They  were  men  of  energy  and  ability,  who 
could  lead  their  congregations  to  Holland  or  to  the  wilds 
of  New  England.  For  the  purpose  in  hand  the  world  has 
never  seen  superior  leaders.  Many  of  them  were  graduates 
of  Cambridge  University,  England.  Their  great  authority 
was  based  on  character,  education,  and  natural  ability.  A 
contemporary  historian  said  of  John  Cotton,  who  came  as. 
pastor  from  the  old  to  the  new  Boston  in  1633,  that 
whatever  he  "delivered  in  the  pulpit  was  soon  put  into 
an  order  of  court  ...  or  set  up  as  a  practice  in  the 
church." 

The  sermons,  from  two  to  four  hours  long,  took  the 
place  of  magazines,  newspapers,  and  modern  musical  and 
theatrical  entertainments.  The  church  members  were  ac 
customed  to  hard  thinking  and  they  enjoyed  it  as  a  men 
tal  exercise.  Their  minds  had  not  been  rendered  flabby 
by  such  a  diet  of  miscellaneous  trash  or  sensational  matter 
as  confronts  modern  readers.  Many  of  the  congregation 
went  with  notebooks  to  record  the  different  heads  and 
the  most  striking  thoughts  in  the  sermon,  such,  for  h> 
stance,  as  the  following  on  the  dangers  of  idleness  :  — 

"  Whilst  the  stream  keeps  running,  it  keeps  clear ;  but  let  it  stand 
still,  it  breeds  frogs  and  toads  and  all  manner  of  filth.  So  while  you 
keep  going,  you  keep  clear." 


36  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

The  sermons  were  often  doctrinal,  metaphysical,  and 
extremely  dry,  but  it  is  a  mistake  to  conclude  that  the 
clergy  did  not  speak  on  topics  of  current  interest.  Win- 
throp  in  his  Journal  for  1639  relates  how  the  Rev.  John 
Cotton  discussed  whether  a  certain  shopkeeper,  who  had 
been  arraigned  before  the  court  for  extortion,  for  having 
taken  "in  some  small  things,  above  two  for  one,"  was 
guilty  of  sin  and  should  be  excommunicated  from  the 
church,  or  only  publicly  admonished.  Cotton  prescribed 
admonition  and  he  laid  down  a  code  of  ethics  for  the  guid 
ance  of  sellers. 

With  the  exception  of  Roger  Williams  (1604?- 1683). 
who  had  the  modern  point  of  view  in  insisting  on  complete 
"soul  liberty,"  on  the  right  of  every  man  to  think  as  he 
pleased  on  matters  of  religion,  the  Puritan  clergy  were  not 
tolerant  of  other  forms  of  worship.  They  said  that  they 
came  to  New  England  in  order  to  worship  God  as  they 
pleased.  They  never  made  the  slightest  pretense  of  estab 
lishing  a  commonwealth  where  another  could  worship  as 
he  pleased,  because  they  feared  that  such  a  privilege  might 
lead  to  a  return  of  the  persecution  from  which  they 
had  fled.  If  those  came  who  thought  differently  about 
religion,  they  were  told  that  there  was  sufficient  room 
elsewhere,  in  Rhode  Island,  for  instance,  whither  Roger 
Williams  went  after  he  was  banished  from  Salem.  The 
history  of  the  Puritan  clergy  would  have  been  more  pleas 
ing  had  they  been  more  tolerant,  less  narrow,  more  modern, 
like  Roger  Williams.  Yet  perhaps  it  is  best  not  to  com 
plain  overmuch  of  the  strange  and  somewhat  repellent 
architecture  of  the  bridge  which  bore  us  over  the  stream 
dividing  the  desert  of  royal  and  ecclesiastical  tyranny  from 
the  Promised  Land  of  our  Republic.  Let  us  not  forget 
that  the  clergy  insisted  on  popular  education  ;  that  wherever 


POETRY 


37 


there  was  a  clergyman,  there  was  almost  certain  to  be  a 
school,  even  if  he  had  to  teach  it  himself,  and  that  the 
clergy  generally  spoke  and  acted  as  if  they  would  rather  be 
"free  among  the  dead  than  slaves  among  the  living." 

POETRY 

The   trend   of   Puritan   theology  and   the   hard   condi 
tions  of  life  did  not  encourage  the  production  of  poetry. 
The  Puritans  even  won 
dered    if    singing    in 

f£j^;s£^^^  ^:.'S5r  TT^ 


singing 

church  was  not  an  exer 
cise  which  turned  the 
mind  from  God.  The 
Rev.  John  Cotton  inves 
tigated  the  question  care 
fully  under  four  main 
heads  and  six  subheads, 
and  he  cited  scriptural 
authority  to  show  that 
Paul  and  Silas  (Acts,  xvi., 
25)  had  sung  a  Psalm  in 
the  prison.  Cotton  there 
fore  concluded  that  the 
Psalms  might  be  sung  in 
church. 

Bay    Psalm    Book.  — 
"The     divines     in     the 
country"  joined  to  trans 
late  "into  English  metre" 
the  whole  book  of  Psalms 
from    the    original    He-  K^S^® 
brew,  and  they  probably     ^  " 
made  the  worst  metrical 


WHOLE 


*kj  Whereuntoisprefixedadifcottrfede-  * 
cjaring  not  only  the  iawfullne**  buralfo 


thenecefiityofcheheavehly  Ordinance 
offingingScripeurePfalroes  in 
the  Churches  of 
God. 


ntone  another  in  ?fcJmet,ffimntt)and. 


^l 


&&&& 

'*£&$ 

FACSIMILE  OF  TITLE-PAGE  TO   "BAY    PSALM 


38  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

translation  in  existence.  In  their  preface  to  this  work, 
known  as  the  Bay  Psalm  Book  (1640),  the  first  book  of 
verse  printed  in  the  British  American  colonies,  they 
explained  that  they  did  not  strive  for  a  more  poetic  trans 
lation  because  "God's  altar  needs  not  our  polishings." 
The  following  verses  from  Psalm  cxxxvii.  are  a  sample 
of  the  so-called  metrical  translation  which  the  Puritans 
sang  :  -  « i .  The  rivers  on  of  Babilon 

there  when  wee  did  sit  downe  : 
yea  even  then  wee  mourned,  when 

wee  remembred  Sion. 
"2.   Our  Harps  wee  did  it  hang  amid, 

upon  the  willow  tree. 
"3.    Because  there  they  that  us  away 

led  in  captivitee, 
Requir'd  of  us  a  song,  &  thus 

askt  mirth  :  us  waste  who  laid, 
sing  us  among  a  Sion's  song, 
unto  us  then  they  said." 

Michael    Wigglesworth    (1631-1705). —This    Harvard 
graduate  and  Puritan  preacher  published  in  1662  a  poem 
setting  forth  some  of  the  tenets  of  Calvinistic  theology. 
This  poem,  entitled  The  Day  of  Doom,  or  a  Poetical  Descrip 
tion  of  the   Great  and  Last  Judgment,  had  the   largest 
circulation  of  any  colonial  poem.     The  following  lines  rep 
resent  a  throng  of  infants  at  the  left  hand  of  the  final  Judge, 
pleading  against  the  sentence  of  infant  damnation  :  — 
"  '  Not  we,  but  he  ate  of  the  tree, 
whose  fruit  was  interdicted ; 
Yet  on  us  all  of  his  sad  fall 

the  punishment's  inflicted. 
How  could  we  sin  that  had  not  been, 

or  how  is  his  sin  our, 
Without  consent,  which  to  prevent 
we  never  had  the  pow'r  ? '  " 


POETRY  39 

Wigglesworth  represents  the  Almighty  as  replying :  - 

"  '  You  sinners  are,  and  such  a  share 

as  sinners  may  expect ; 
Such  you  shall  have,  for  I  do  save 

none  but  mine  own  Elect. 
Yet  to  compare  your  sin  with  their 

who  liv'd  a  longer  time, 
I  do  confess  yours  is  much  less, 

though  every  sin's  a  crime. 

"  l  A  crime  it  is,  therefore  in  bliss 
you  may  not  hope  to  dwell ; 
But  unto  you  I  shall  allow 
the  easiest  room  in  Hell.'  " 

When  we  read  verse  like  this,  we  realize  how  fortunate 
the  Puritanism  of  Old  England  was  to  have  one  great  poet 
schooled  in  the  love  of  both  morality  and  beauty.  John 
Milton's  poetry  shows  not  only  his  sublimity  and  high 
ideals,  but  also  his  admiration  for  beauty,  music,  and  art. 
Wigglesworth's  verse  is  inferior  to  much  of  the  ballad  dog 
gerel,  but  it  has  a  swing  and  a  directness  fitted  to  catch 
the  popular  ear  and  to  lodge  in  the  memory.  While  some 
of  his  work  seems  humorous  to  us,  it  would  not  have  made 
that  impression  on  the  early  Puritans.  At  the  same  time, 
we  must  not  rely  on  verse  like  this  for  our  understanding 
of  their  outlook  on  life  and  death.  Beside  Wigglesworth's 
lines  we  should  place  the  epitaph,  "  Reserved  for  a  Glo 
rious  Resurrection,"  composed  by  the  great  orthodox  Puri 
tan  clergyman,  Cotton  Mather  (p.  46),  for  his  own  infant, 
which  died  unbaptized  when  four  days  old.  It  is  well  to 
remember  that  both  the  Puritans  and  their  clergy  had  a 
quiet  way  of  believing  that  God  had  reserved  to  himself 
the  final  interpretation  of  his  own  word. 

Anne  Bradstreet(  1612 -1672).  —  Colonial  New  England's 
best  poet,  or  "  The  Tenth  Muse,"  as  she  was  called  by  her 


40  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

friends,  was  a  daughter  of  the  Puritan  governor,  Thomas 
Dudley,  and  became  the  wife  of  another  Puritan  governor, 
Simon  Bradstreet,  with  whom  she  came  to  New  England 
in  1630.  Although  she  was  born  before  the  death  of 
Shakespeare,  she  seems  never  to  have  studied  the  works 
of  that  great  dramatist.  Her  models  were  what  Milton 
called  the  "  fantastics,"  a  school  of  poets  who  mistook 
for  manifestations  of  poetic  power,  far-fetched  and  strained 
metaphors,  oddities  of  expression,  remote  comparisons, 
conceits,  and  strange  groupings  of  thought.  She  had 
especially  studied  Sylvester's  paraphrase  of  The  Divine 
Weeks  and  Works  of  the  French  poet  Du  Bartas,  and 
probably  also  the  works  of  poets  like  George  Herbert 
C1 593"1 63  3),  of  the  English  fantastic  school.  This  para 
phrase  of  Du  Bartas  was  published  in  a  folio  of  1215  pages, 
a  few  years  before  Mrs.  Bradstreet  came  to  America.  This 
book  shows  the  taste  which  prevailed  in  England  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  first  third  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
before  Milton  came  into  the  ascendency.  The  fantastic 
comparison  between  the  "  Spirit  Eternal,"  brooding 
upon  chaos,  and  a  hen,  is  shown  in  these  lines  from  Du 
Bartas :  - 

"  Or  as  a  Hen  that  fain  would  hatch  a  brood 
(Some  of  her  own,  some  of  adoptive  blood) 
Sits  close  thereon,  and  with  her  lively  heat, 
Of  yellow-white  balls,  doth  live  birds  beget  : 
Even  in  such  sort  seemed  the  Spirit  Eternal 
To  brood  upon  this  Gulf  with  care  paternal." 

A  contemporary  critic  thought  that  he  was  giving  her 
early  work  high  praise  when  he  called  her  "  a  right  Du 
Bartas  girl."  One  of  her  early  poems  is  The  Four  Elements, 
where  Fire,  Air,  Earth,  and  Water 


NATHANIEL  WARD  41 

"...  did  contest 

Which  was  the  strongest,  noblest,  and  the  best, 
Who  was  of  greatest  use  and  mightiest  force." 

Such  a  debate  could  never  be  decided,  but  the  subject  was 
well  suited  to  the  fantastic  school  of  poets  because  it 
afforded  an  opportunity  for  much  ingenuity  of  argument 
and  for  far-fetched  comparisons,  which  led  nowhere. 

Late  in  life,  in  her  poem,  Contemplations,  she  wrote  some 
genuine  poetry,  little  marred  by  imitation  of  the  fantastic 
school.  Spenser  seems  to  have  become  her  master  in  later 
years.  No  one  without  genuine  poetic  ability  could  have 
written  such  lines  as  :  — 

"  I  heard  the  merry  grasshopper  then  sing, 

The  black-clad  cricket  bear  a  second  part, 
They  kept  one  tune,  and  played  on  the  same  string^ 
Seeming  to  glory  in  their  little  art." 

These  lines  show  both  poetic  ease  and  power  : — - 

"  The  mariner  that  on  smooth  waves  doth  glide 
Sings  merrily,  and  steers  his  bark  with  ease, 
As  if  he  had  command  of  wind  and  tide, 
And  now  become  great  master  of  the  seas." 

The  comparative  excellence  of  her  work  in  such  an  at 
mosphere  and  amid  the  domestic  cares  incident  to  rearing 
eight  children  is  remarkable. 

NATHANIEL  WARD,  15787-1652 

In  1647  Nathaniel  Ward,  who  had  been  educated  for 
the  law,  but  who  afterward  became  a  clergyman,  pub 
lished  a  strange  work  known  as  The  Simple  Cobbler  of 
Agawam,  in  America  "  willing,"  as  the  sub-title  continues, 
"to  help  mend  his  native  country,  lamentably  tattered, 
both  in  the  upper  leather  arid  sole,  with  all  the  honest 


COLONIAL  LITERATURE 


stitches  he  can  take."  He  had  been  assistant  pastor  at 
Agawam  (Ipswich)  until  ill  health  caused  him  to  resign. 
He  then  busied  himself  in  compiling  a  code  of  laws  and 

in  other  writing  be 
fore  he  returned  to 
England  in  1647. 
The  following  two 
sentences  from  his 
unique  book  show 
two  points  of  the 
religious  faith  of  the 
Puritans:  (i)  the  be 
lief  in  a  personal 
devil  always  actively 
seeking  the  destruc 
tion  of  mankind,  and 
(2)  the  assumption 
that  the  vitals  of  the 
"  elect "  are  safe 
from  the  mortal  sting 


THE 

SIMPLE    COBLER 

OF 

AGO  AW  AM  M  ift  AMERI  CA. 

WILLING 

To  help  'mend  his  Native  Country,  la- 

mentably  tattered,both  in  the  upper- Leather 

and  fole,wUhallthe  honeft  ftircheshe  can  take. 

And  as  willing  never  to  bee  paid  for  his  work, 
by  Old  English  wonted  pay. 

It  is  his  Trade  to  parch  all  theyear  long^  gratis. 
Therefore  I  pray  Genrlemen  keep  your  purfo- 

By  Theodore  dehGtwd. 
The  Fourth  Edition y  roithfornedmtndmtnts. 


In  rebus  arduisactenuifpe, 
tifs;via 


. 
Cic. 


cni<tcjttectnpna.t*ti 

In  Englilh, 

When  boore«ivd  Ihoe*  are  tome  up  to  the  le/tr, 
Cbtlersmuft  thtufttheirawlesup  ro  the  hefiv. 

Thais  no  time  to  feare  Aftlla  tramnt  : 
JVtSutor  yuitlrm  ultra  crepidan. 


Printedby  7  .  V.  &  *.  7  for  Sttth*.  ftiwrf,  ae 
B)ble  in  Popes  Head-A^ley,    ^ 


the  fignc  of  the 


FACSIMILE   OF  TITLE-PAGE  TO  WARD'S 
COBBLER  OF  AGAWAM  " 


of  sin. 

"Satan  is  now  in  his 
passions,  he  feels  his 
passion  approaching,  he 
loves  to  fish  in  roiled  waters.  Though  that  dragon  cannot  sting  the 
vitals  of  the  elect  mortally,  yet  that  Beelzebub  can  fly-blow  their  intel 
lectuals  miserably." 

He  is  often  a  bitter  satirist,  a  sort  of  colonial  Carlyle,  as 
this  attack  on  woman  shows  :  — 

"  I  honor  the  woman  that  can  honor  herself  with  her  attire  ;  a  good  text 
always  deserves  a  fair  margent ;  I  am  not  much  offended  if  I  see  a  trim 
far  trimmer  than  she  that  wears  it.  In  a  word,  whatever  Christianity  or 
civility  will  allow,  I  can  afford  with  London  measure  :  but  when  I  hear  a 
nugiperous  gentledame  inquire  what  dress  the  Queen  is  in  this  week : 


SAMUEL  SEWALL  43 

what  the  nudiustertian  fashion  of  the  Court ;  I  mean  the  very  newest ; 
with  egg  to  be  in  it  in  all  haste,  whatever  it  be ;  I  look  at  her  as  the  very 
gizzard  of  a  trifle,  the  product  of  a  quarter  of  a  cipher,  the  epitome  of 
nothing,  fitter  to  be  kicked,  if  she  were  of  a  kickable  substance,  than 
either  honored  or  humored." 

He  does  not  hesitate  to  coin  a  word.  The  preceding 
short  selection  introduces  us  to  " nugiperous "  and  "nu 
diustertian.  "  Next,  he  calls  the  women's  tailor-made 
gowns  "the  very  pettitoes  of  infirmity,  the  giblets  of 
perquisquilian  toys." 

The  spirit  of  a  reformer  always  sees  work  to  be  done, 
and  Ward  emphasized  three  remedies  for  mid-seventeenth- 
century  ills  :  ( i)  Stop  toleration  of  departure  from  religious 
truth  ;  (2)  banish  the  frivolities  of  women  and  men  ;  and  (3) 
bring  the  civil  war  in  England  to  a  just  end.  In  proportion 
to  the  population,  his  Simple  Cobbler,  designed  to  mend 
human  ways,  was  probably  as  widely  read  as  Carlyle's 
Sartor  Resartus  in  later  days. 

In  criticism,  Ward  deserves  to  be  remembered  for  these 
two  lines :  — 

"  Poetry's  a  gift  wherein  but  few  excel  ; 
He  doth  very  iH  that  doth  not  passing  well." 

SAMUEL  SEWALL,  1652-1730 

There  was  born  in  1652  at  Bishopstoke,  Hampshire, 
England,  a  boy  who  sailed  for  New  England  when  he  was 
nine  years  old,  and  who  became  our  greatest  colonial  diarist. 
This  was  Samuel  Sewall,  who  graduated  from  Harvard  in 
1671  and  finally  became  chief  justice  of  Massachusetts. 

His  Diary  runs  with  some  breaks  from  1673  to  1729, 
the  year  before  his  death.  Good  diaries  are  scarce  in  any 
literature.  Those  who  keep  them  seldom  commit  to  writ 
ing  many  of  the  most  interesting  events  and  secrets  of  their 


44 


COLONIAL  LITERATURE 


lives.  This  failing  makes  the  majority  of  diaries  and  mem 
oirs  very  dry,  but  this  fault  cannot  be  found  with  Samuel 
Sewall.  His  Diary  will  more  and  more  prove  a  mine 

of  wealth  to  the  future 
writers  of  our  literature,  to 
our  dramatists,  novelists, 
poets,  as  well  as  to  our 
historians.  The  early 
chronicles  and  stories  on 
which  Shakespeare  founded 
many  of  his  plays  were  no 
more  serviceable  to  him 
than  this  Diary  may  prove 
to  a  coming  American 
writer  with  a  genius  like 
Hawthorne's. 

In  Sewall's  Diary  we  at 
once  feel  that  we  are  close 

SAMUEL  SEWALL  ^       j.^  The       flowing 

entry  brings  us  face  to  face  with  the  children  in  a  Puritan 
household :  — 

"  Nov.  6,  1692.  Joseph  threw  a  knop  of  brass  and  hit  his  sister  Betty 
on  the  forehead  so  as  to  make  it  bleed  and  swell ;  upon  which,  and  for 
his  playing  at  Prayer-time,  and  eating  when  Return  Thanks,  I  whipped 
him  pretty  smartly.  When  I  first  went  in  (called  by  his  Grandmother) 
he  sought  to  shadow  and  hide  himself  from  me  behind  the  head  of 
the  cradle:  which  gave  me  the  sorrowful  remembrance  of  Adam's 
carriage.1' 

Sewall  was  one  of  the  seven  judges  who  sentenced  nine 
teen  persons  to  be  put  to  death  for  witchcraft  at  Salem. 
After  this  terrible  delusion  had  passed,  he  had  the  manli 
ness  to  rise  in  church  before  all  the  members,  and  after 
acknowledging  "  the  blame  and  shame  of  his  decision/* 


SAMUEL  SEWALL  45 

call  for  "  prayers  that  God  who  has  an  unlimited  authority 
would  pardon  that  sin." 

Sewall's  Diary  is  best  known  for  its  faithful  chronicle  of 
his  courtship  of  Mrs.  Catharine  Winthrop.  Both  had  been 
married  twice  before,  and  both  had  grown  children.  He  was 
sixty-nine  and  she  fifty-six.  No  record  of  any  other  Puritan 
courtship  so  unique  as  this  has  been  given  to  the  world. 
He  began  his  formal  courtship  of  Mrs.  Winthrop,  October  I, 
1 720.  His  Diary  contains  records  of  each  visit,  of  what  they 
said  to  each  other,  of  the  Sermons,  cake,  and  gingerbread 
that  he  gave  her,  of  the  healths  that  he  drank  to  her,  the 
lump  of  sugar  that  she  gave  him,  of  how  they  "  went  into 
the  best  room,  and  clos'd  the  shutters." 

"  Nov.  2.  Gave  her  about  \  pound  of  sugar  almonds,  cost  3  shillings 
per  £.  Carried  them  on  Monday.  She  seenVd  pleas'd  with  them, 
ask'd  what  they  cost.  Spake  of  giving  her  a  hundred  pounds  per 
annum  if  I  died  before  her.  Ask'd  her  what  sum  she  would  give  me, 
if  she  should  die  first  ?  " 

"  Monday,  Nov.  7.  I  went  to  Mad.  Winthrop ;  found  her  rocking 
her  little  Katy  in  the  cradle.  I  excus?d  my  coming  so  late  (near  eight). 
She  set  me  an  arnVd  chair  and  cushion ;  and  so  the  cradle  was  between 
her  arm'd  chair  and  mine.  Gave  her  the  remnant  of  my  almonds.  She 
did  not  eat  of  them  as  before.  .  .  .  T^he  fire  was  come  to  one  short  brand 
besides  the  block,  which  brand  was  set  up  in  end  ;  at  last  it  fell  to  pieces 
and  no  recruit  was  made.  .  .  .  Took  leave  of  her.  .  .  .  Her  dress 
was  not  so  clean  as  sometime  it  had  been.  Jehovah  jireh  ! " 

Acute  men  have  written  essays  to  account  for  the  aristo 
cratic  Mrs.  Winthrop's  refusal  of  Chief-Justice  Sewall. 
Some  have  said  that  it  was  due  to  his  aversion  to  slavery 
and  to  his  refusal  to  allow  her  to  keep  her  slaves.  This 
episode  is  only  a  small  part  of  a  rich  storehouse.  The 
greater  part  of  the  Diary  contains  only  the  raw  materials 
of  literature,  yet  some  of  it  is  real  literature,  and  it  ranks 
among  the  great  diaries  of  the  world. 


46 


COLONIAL  LITERATURE 


COTTON    MATHER,  1663-1728 

Life  and  Personality.  —  Cotton  Mather,  grandson  of  the 
Rev.  John  Cotton  (p.  14),  and  the  most  distinguished  of 
the  old  type  of  Puritan  clergymen,  was  born  in  Boston 
and  died  in  his  native  city,  without  ever  having  traveled 
a  hundred  miles  from  it.  He  entered  Harvard  at  the  age  of 
eleven,  and  took  the  bachelor's  degree  at  fifteen.  His  life 
shows  such  an  overemphasis  of  certain  Puritan  traits  as 
almost  to  presage  the  coming  decline  of  clerical  influence. 
He  says  that  at  the  age  of  only  seven  or  eight  he  not  only 
composed  forms  of  prayer  for  his  schoolmates,  but  also 
obliged  them  to  pray,  although  some  of  them  cuffed  him 


COTTON  MATHER  47 

for  his  pains.  At  fourteen  he  began  a  series  of  fasts  to 
crucify  the  flesh,  increase  his  holiness,  and  bring  him  nearer 
to  God.  / 

He  endeavored  never  to  waste  a  minute.  In  his  study, 
where  he  often  worked  sixteen  hours  a  day,  he  had  in  large 
letters  the  sign,  "  BE  SHORT,"  to  greet  the  eyes  of  visitors. 
The  amount  of  writing  which  he  did  almost  baffles  belief. 
His  published  works,  numbering  about  four  hundred, 
include  sermons,  essays,  and  books.  During  all  of  his 
adult  life,  he  also  preached  in  the  North  Church  of  Boston. 

He  was  a  religious  "  fantastic  "  (  p.  40  ),  that  is,  he  made 
far-fetched  applications  of  religious  truth.  A  tall  man 
suggested  to  him  high  attainments  in  Christianity;  wash 
ing  his  hands,  the  desirability  of  a  clean  heart. 

Although  Cotton  Mather  became  the  most  famous  clergy 
man  of  colonial  New  England,  he  was  disappointed  in  two 
of  his  life's  ambitions.  He  failed  to  become  president  of 
Harvard  and  to  bring  New  England  back  in  religious  mat 
ters  to  the  first  halcyon  days  of  the  colony.  On  the  con 
trary,  he  lived  to  see  Puritan  theocracy  surfer  a  great 
decline.  His  fantastic  and  strained  application  of  religious 
truth,  his  overemphasis  of  many  things,  and  especially 
his  conduct  in  zealously  aiding  and  abetting  the  Salem 
witchcraft  murders,  were  no  mean  factors  in  causing  that 
decline. 

His  intentions  were  certainly  good.  He  was  an  apostle 
of  altruism,  and  he  tried  to  improve  each  opportunity  for 
doing  good  in  everyday  life.  He  trained  his  children  to 
do  acts  of  kindness  for  other  children.  His  Essays  to  Do 
Good  were  a  powerful  influence  on  the  life  of  Benjamin 
Franklin.  Cotton  Mather  would  not  have  lived  in  vain  if 
he  had  done  nothing  else  except  to  help  mold  Franklin 
for  the  service  of  his  country ;  but  this  is  only  one  of 


48  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

Mather's  achievements.  We  must  next  pass  to  his  great 
work  in  literature. 

The  Magnalia. —  This  "  prose  epic  of  New  England 
Puritanism,"  the  most  famous  of  Mather's  many  works,  is 
a  large  folio  volume  entitled  Magnalia  Christi  Americana: 
or  the  Ecclesiastical  History  of  New  England.  It  was  pub 
lished  in  .London  in  1 702,  two  years  after  Dryden's  death. 

The  book  is  a  remarkable  compound  of  whatever  seemed 
to  the  author  most  striking  in  early  New  England  history. 
His  point  of  view  was  of  course  religious.  The  work  con 
tains  a  rich  store  of  biography  of  the  early  clergy,  magis 
trates,  and  governors,  of  the  lives  of  eleven  of  the  clerical 
graduates  of  Harvard,  of  the  faith,  discipline,  and  govern 
ment  of  the  New  England  churches,  of  remarkable  mani 
festations  of  the  divine  providence,  and  of  the  "  Way  of 
the  Lord  "  among  the  churches  and  the  Indians. 

We  may  to-day  turn  to  the  Magnalia  for  vivid  accounts  of 
early  New  England  life.  Mather  has  a  way  of  selecting  and 
expressing  facts  in  such  a  way  as  to  cause  them  to  lodge 
in  the  memory.  These  two  facts  about  John  Cotton  give 
us  a  vivid  impression  of  the  influence  of  the  early  clergy  :  — 

"  The  keepe'f  of  the  inn  where  he  did  use  to  lodge,  when  he  came 
to  Derby,  would  profanely  sav  to  his  companions,  that  he  wished  Mr. 
Cotton  were  gone  oat  or  his  ncuse,  tor  he  was  not  able  to  swear  while 
that  man  was  under  his  roof.  .  .  . 

"  The  Sabbath  he  began  the  evening  before,  for  which  keeping  of  the 
Sabbath  from  evening  to  evening  he  wrote  arguments  before  his  coming 
to  New  England ;  and  I  suppose  'twas  from  his  reason  and  practice  that 
the  Christians  of  New  England  have  generally  done  so  too." 

We  read  that  the  daily  vocation  of  Thomas  Shepard,  the 
first  pastor  at  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  was,  to  quote 
Mather's  noble  phrase,  "A  Trembling  Walk  with  God." 
He  speaks  of  the  choleric  disposition  of  Thomas  Hooker, 


COTTON  MATHER  49 

the  great  Hartford  clergyman,  and  says  it  was  "  useful  unto 
him,"  because  "  he  had  ordinarily  as  much  government  of 
his  choler  as  a  man  has  of  a  mastiff  dog  in  a  chain;  he 
'  could  let  out  his  dog,  and  pull  in  his  dog,  as  he  pleased.'  " 
Some  of  Mather's  prose  causes  modern  readers  to  wonder 
if  he  was  not  a  humorist.  He  says  that  a  fire  in  the  col 
lege  buildings  in  some  mysterious  way  influenced  the  Pres 
ident  of  Harvard  to  shorten  one  of  his  long  prayers,  and 
gravely  adds,  "  that  if  the  devotions  had  held  three  minutes 
longer,  the  Colledge  had  been  irrecoverably  laid  in  ashes." 
One  does  not  feel  sure  that  Mather  saw  the  humor  in  this 
demonstration  of  practical  religion.  It  is  also  doubtful 
whether  he  is  intentionally  humorous  in  his  most  fantastic 
prose,  such,  for  instance,  as  his  likening  the  Rev.  Mr.  Par 
tridge  to  the  bird  of  that  name,  who,  because  he  "  had  no 
defence  neither  of  beak  nor  claw,"  took  "  a  flight  over  the 
ocean "  to  escape  his  ecclesiastical  hunters,  and  finally 
"  took  wing  to  become  a  bird  of  paradise,  along  with  the 
winged  seraphim  of  heaven." 

Such  fantastic  conceits,  which  for  a  period  blighted  the  lit 
erature  of  the  leading  European  nations,  had  their  last  great 
exponent  in  Cotton  Mather.  •  Minor  writers  still  indulge  in 
these  conceits,  and  find  willing  readers  among  the  unedu 
cated,  the  tired,  and  those  who  are  bored  when  they  are 
required  to  do  more  than  skim  the  surface  of  things.  John 
Seccomb,  a  Harvard  graduate  of  1728,  the  year  in  which 
Mather  died,  then  gained  fame  from  such  lines  as :  — 

"  A  furrowed  brow, 
Where  corn  might  grow," 

but  the  best  prose  and  poetry  have  for  a  long  time  won 
their  readers  for  other  qualities.  Even  the  taste  of  the 
next  generation  showed  a  change,  for  Cotton  Mather's  son, 
Samuel,  noted  as  a  blemish  his  father's  "straining  for  far- 


50  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

fetched  and  dear-bought  hints."  Cotton  Mather's  most 
repellent  habit  to  modern  readers  is  his  overloading  his 
pages  with  quotations  in  foreign  languages,  especially  in 
Latin.  He  thus  makes  a  pedantic  display  of  his  wide 

reading. 

He  is  not  always  accurate  in  his  presentation  of  historical 
or  biographical  matter,  but  in  spite  of  all  that  can  be  said 
against  the  Magnalia,  it  is  a  vigorous  presentation  of  much 
that  we  should  not  willingly  let  die.  In  fact,  when  we  read 
the  early  history  of  New  England,  we  are  frequently  getting 
from  the  Magnalia  many  things  in  changed  form  without 
ever  suspecting  the  source. 

JONATHAN  EDWARDS,  1703-1758 

Life  and  Writings.  — Jonathan  Edwards,  who  ranks  among 
the  world's  greatest  theologians  and  metaphysicians,  was 
born  in  1703  in  East  Windsor,  Connecticut.  Like  Cotton 
Mather,  Edwards  was  precocious,  entering  Yale  before  he 
was  thirteen.  The  year  previous  to  his  going  to  college, 
he  wrote  a  paper  on  spiders,  showing  careful  scientific 
observation  and  argument.  This  paper  has  been  called 
"  one  of  the  rarest  specimens  of  precocious  scientific  genius 
on  record."  At  fourteen,  he  read  Locke's  Essay  on  the 
Human  Understanding,  receiving  from  it,  he  says,  higher 
pleasure  "than  the  most  greedy  miser  finds  when  gather 
ing  up  handfuls  of  silver  and  gold  from  some  newly  dis 
covered  treasure."  Before  he  was  seventeen,  he  had 
graduated  from  Yale,  and  he  had  become  a  tutor  there 
before  he  was  twenty-one. 

Like  Dante,  he  had  a  Beatrice.  Thinking  of  her,  he 
wrote  this  prose  hymn  of  a  maiden's  love  for  the  Divine 
Power :  — 


JONATHAN   EDWARDS 


ft  They  say  there  is  a  young  lady  in  New  Haven  who  is  beloved  of 
that  great  Being  who  made  and  rules  the  world,  and  there  are  certain 
seasons  in  which  this  great  Being,  in  some  way  or  other  invisible,  comes 
to  her  and  fills  her  mind  with  exceeding  sweet  delight,  and  that  she 
hardly  cares  for  anything  ex 
cept  to  meditate  on  Him  ;  that 
she  expects  after  a  while  to  be 
received  up  where  He  is,  to  be 
raised  up  out  of  the  world  and 
caught  up  into  heaven;  being 
assured  that  He  loves  her  too 
well  to  let  her  remain  at  a  dis 
tance  from  Him  always.  .  .  .. 
She  will  sometimes  go  about 
from  place  to  place  singing 
sweetly;  and  seems  to  be  al 
ways  full  of  joy  and  pleasure, 
and  no  one  knows  for  what. 
She  loves  to  be  alone,  walking 
in  the  fields  and  groves,  and 
seems  to  have  some  one  invisi 
ble  always  conversing  with 
her." 

Jonathan  Edwards  thus 
places  before  us  Sarah 
Pierrepont,  a  New  Eng 
land  Puritan  maiden.  To 

note     the      similarity      of 
_ 

thought  between  the  Old 

Puritan  England  and  the  New,  let  us  turn  to  the  maiden  in 

Milton's  Comus  :  — 


MEMORIAL  TABLET  TO  JONATHAN  EDWARDS 
(First  Church,  Northampton,  Mass.) 


"  A  thousand  liveried  angels  lackey  her, 
Driving  far  off  each  thing  of  sin  and  guilt ; 
And  in  clear  dream  and  solemn  vision, 
Tell  her  of  things  that  no  gross  ear  can  hear, 
Till  oft  converse  with  heav'nly  habitants 


52  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

Begin  to  cast  a  beam  on  th 'outward  shape, 
The  unpolluted  temple  of  the  mind, 
And  turns  it  by  degrees  to  the  soul's  essence, 
Till  all  be  made  immortal.1' 

Unlike  Dante,  Edwards  married  his  Beatrice  at  the  age 
of  seventeen.  In  1727,  the  year  of  his  marriage,  he  became 
pastor  of  the  church  in  Northampton,  Massachusetts. 
With  the  aid  of  his  wife,  he  inaugurated  the  greatest  religious 
revival  of  the  century,  known  as  the  "  Great  Awakening," 
which  spread  to  other  colonial  churches,  crossed  the  ocean, 
and  stimulated  Wesley  to  call  sinners  to  repentance. 

Early  in  life,  Edwards  formed  a  series  of  resolutions, 
three  of  which  are  :  — 

"  To  live  with  all  my  might,  while  I  do  live." 

"  Never  to  do  anything,  which,  if  I  should  see  in  another, 
I  should  count  a  just  occasion  to  despise  him  for,  or  to 
think  any  way  the  more  meanly  of  him." 

"  Never,  henceforward,  till  I  die,  to  act  as  if  I  were  any 
way  my  own,  but  entirely  and  altogether  God's." 

He  earnestly  tried  to  keep  these  resolutions  until  the  end. 
After  a  successful  pastorate  of  twenty-three  years  at 
Northampton,  the  church  dismissed  him  for  no  fault  of  his 
own. 

Like  Dante,  he  was  driven  into  exile,  and  he  went  from 
Northampton  to  the  frontier  town  of  Stockbridge,  where 
he  remained  for  seven  years  as  a  missionary  to  the  Indians. 
His  wife  and  daughters  did  their  utmost  to  add  to  the 
family  income,  and  some  contributions  were  sent  him  from 
Scotland,  but  he  was  so  poor  that  he  wrote  his  books  on 
the  backs  of  letters  and  on  the  blank  margins  cut  from 
newspapers.  His  fame  was  not  swallowed  up  in  the  wilder 
ness.  Princeton  College  called  him  to  its  presidency  in 
1757.  He  died  in  that  office  in  1758,  after  less  than  three 


JONATHAN  EDWARDS  53 

months'  service  in  his  new  position.  His  wife  was  still  in 
Stockbridge  when  he  passed  away.  "  Tell  her,"  he  said  to 
his  daughter,  "  that  the  uncommon  union  which  has  so  long 
subsisted  between  us  has  been  of  such  a  nature  as  I  trust 
is  spiritual,  and  therefore  will  continue  forever."  In  Sep 
tember  of  the  same  year  she  came  to  lie  beside  him  in  the 
graveyard  at  Princeton. 

In  1900,  the  church  that  had  dismissed  him  one  hundred 
and  fifty  years  before  placed  on  its  walls  a  bronze  tablet 
in  his  memory,  with  the  noble  inscription  from  Malachi 
ii.,  6. 

As  a  writer,  Jonathan  Edwards  won  fame  in  three  fields. 
He  is  (i)  America's  greatest  metaphysician,  (2)  her  greatest 
theologian,  and  (3)  a  unique  poetic  interpreter  of  the  uni 
verse  as  a  manifestation  of  the  divine  love. 

His  best  known  metaphysical  work  is  TJie  Freedom  of  the 
Will  (1754).  The  central  point  of  this  work  is  that  the 
will  is  determined  by  the  strongest  motive,  that  it  is  "  re 
pugnant  to  reason  that  one  act  of  the  will  should  come  into 
existence  without  a  cause."  He  boldly  says  that  God  is 
free  to  do  only  what  is  right.  Edwards  emphasizes  the 
higher  freedom,  gained  through  repeated  acts  of  the  right 
kind,  until  both  the  inclination  and  the  power  to  do  wrong 
disappear. 

As  a  theologian,  America  has  not  yet  produced  his 
superior.  His  Treatise  concerning  the  Religious  Affections, 
his  account  of  the  Great  Awakening,  called  Faithful  Nar 
rative  of  the  Surprising  Work  of  God,  and  Thoughts  on 
the  Revival,  as  well  as  his  more  distinctly  technical  theo 
logical  works,  show  his  ability  in  this  field.  Unfortunately, 
he  did  not  rise  superior  to  the  Puritan  custom  of  preaching 
about  hell  fire.  He  delivered  on  that  subject  a  sermon  which 
causes  modern  readers  to  shudder ;  but  this,  although  the 


54  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

most  often  quoted,  is  the  least  typical  of  the  man  and  his 
writings.  Those  in  search  of  really  typical  statements  of 
his  theology  will  find  them  in  such  specimens  as,  "  God  and 
real  existence  is  the  same.  God  is  and  there  is  nothing 
else."  He  was  a  theological  idealist,  believing  that  all  the 
varied  phenomena  of  the  universe  are  "  constantly  proceed 
ing  from  God,  as  light  from  the  sun."  Such  statements 
suggest  Shelley's  lines,  which  tell  how 

" .     .     .     the  one  Spirit's  plastic  stress 
Sweeps  through  the  dull  dense  world  compelling  there 
All  new  successions  to  the  forms  they  wear." 

Dr.  Allen,  Edwards's  biographer  and  critic,  and  a  careful 
student  of  his  unpublished,  as  well  as  of  his  published, 
writings,  says,  "  He  was  at  his  best  and  greatest,  most  origi 
nal  and  creative,  when  he  described  the  divine  love."  Such 
passages  as  the  following,  and  also  the  one  quoted  on  page 
51,  show  this  quality  :  — 

lt  When  we  behold  the  fragrant  rose  and  lily,  we  see  His  love  and 
purity.  So  the  green  trees  and  fields  and  singing  of  birds  are  the 
emanations  of  His  infinite  joy  and  benignity.  The  easiness  and  natural 
ness  of  trees  and  vines  are  shadows  of  His  beauty  and  loveliness." 

His  favorite  text  was,  "  I  am  the  Rose  of  Sharon  and  the 
Lily  of  the  valleys,"  and  his  favorite  words  were  "  sweet 
and  bright." 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE   OF  THE   PERIOD 

The  great  English  writers  between  the  colonization  of 
Jamestown  in  1607  and  the  outbreak  of  the  Freneh  and 
Indian  War  in  1754  are  :  (i)  John  Milton  (1608-1674),  the 
great  poetic  spokesman  of  Puritan  England,  whose  Comus 
is  addressed  to  those,  who  :  — 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE  OF  THE  PERIOD  55 

" .     .     .     by  due  steps  aspire 
To  lay  their  just  hands  on  that  golden  key 
That  opes  the  palace  of  eternity," 

whose  Sonnets  breathe  a  purposeful  prayer  to  live  this  life 
as  ever  in  his  great  Taskmaster's  eye,  and  whose  Paradise 
Lost  is  the  colossal  epic  of  the  loss  of  Eden  through  sin ; 
(2)  John  Bunyan  (1628-1688),  whose  Pilgrim's  Progress 
addressed  itself  in  simple,  earnest  English  to  each  individ 
ual  human  being,  telling  him  what  he  must  do  to  escape 
the  City  of  Destruction  and  to  reach  the  City  of  All  De 
light  ;  (3)  John  Dryden  (1631-1700),  a  master  in  the  field  of 
satiric  and  didactic  verse  and  one  of  the  pioneers  in  the  field 
of  modern  prose  criticism;  (4)  Alexander  Pope  (1688-1744), 
another  poet  of  the  satiric  and  didactic  school,  who  exalted 
form  above  matter,  and  wrote  polished  couplets  which  have 
been  models  for  so  many  inferior  poets;  (5)  the  essayists, 
Richard  Steele  (1672-1729)  and  Joseph  Addison  (1672- 
1719),  the  latter  being  especially  noted  for  the  easy,  flowing 
prose  of  his  papers  in  the  Spectator ;  (6)  Jonathan  Swift 
(1667-1745),  a  master  of  prose  satire,  whose  Gullivers 
Travels  has  not  lost  its  fascination;  (7)  Daniel  Defoe 
(1661  ?-i  731)  whose  Robinson  Crusoe  continues  to  increase 
in  popularity;  (8)  Samuel  Richardson  (1689-1761),  and 
Henry  Fielding  (1707-1754),  the  two  great  mid-eighteenth- 
century  novelists. 

The  colonial  literature  of  this  period  was  influenced  only 
in  a  very  minor  degree  by  the  work  of  these  men,  for  a 
generation  usually  passed  before  the  influence  of  contem 
porary  English  authors  appeared  in  American  literature. 
In  the  next  chapter,  we  shall  see  evidences  of  the  influence 
of  Pope.  Benjamin  Franklin  will  tell  us  how  Bunyan  and 
Addison  were  his  teachers,  and  the  early  fiction  will  show 
its  indebtedness  to  the  work  of  Samuel  Richardson. 


^6  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

LEADING   HISTORICAL  FACTS 

Virginia  and  Massachusetts  produced  the  most  of  our 
colonial  literature.  There  were,  however,  thirteen  colonies 
stretched  along  the  seaboard  from  Georgia  (1733),  the  last 
to  be  founded,  to  Canada.  Although  these  colonies  were 
established  under  different  grants  or  charters,  and  although 
some  had  more  liberty  and  suffered  less  from  the  inter 
ference  of  England  than  others,  it  is  nevertheless  true 
that  every  colony  was  a  school  for  a  self-governing  democ 
racy.  No  colonies  elsewhere  in  the  world  had  the  same 
amount  of  liberty.  This  period  was  a  necessary  prepara 
tion  for  the  coming  republic. 

We  must  riot  suppose  that  there  was  complete  liberty  h 
those  days.  Such  a  state  has  not  been  reached  even  in  th, 
twentieth  century.  The  early  government  of  Virginia  We./ 
largely  aristocratic;  that  of  Massachusetts,  theocratic. 
Virginia  persecuted  the  Puritans.  The  early  settlers  /:f 
Massachusetts  drove  out  Roger  Williams  and  hanged  Quak 
ers.  New  York  persecuted  those  who  did  not  join  fhe 
Church  of  England.  The  central  truth,  however,  is  that 
these  thirteen  colonies  were  making  the  greatest  of  all 
world  experiments  in  democracy  and  liberty. 

The  important  colony  of  New  Netherland  (New  York) 
was  settled  by  the  Dutch  early  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
They  established  an  aristocracy  with  great  landed  estates 
along  the  Hudson.  The  student  of  literature  is  specially 
interested  in  this  colony  because  Washington  Irving  (p.  112) 
has  invested  it  with  a  halo  of  romance.  He  shows  us  the 
sturdy  Knickerbockers,  the  Van  Cortlands,  the  Van  Dycks, 
the  Van  Wycks,  and  other  chivalrous  Dutch  burghers,  sit 
ting  in  perfect  silence,  puffing  their  pipes,  and  thinking  of 
nothing  for  hours  together  in  those  "days  of  simplicity  and 


LEADING  HISTORICAL  FACTS  57 

sunshine."  For  literary  reasons  it  is  well  that  this  was  not 
made  an  English  colony  until  the  Duke  of  York  took  posses 
sion  of  it  in  1664. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  colonists 
in  the  middle  and  northern  part  of  the  country  divided  their 
energies  almost  equally  between  trade  and  agriculture. 
At  the  South,  agriculture  was  the  chief  occupation  and 
tobacco  and  rice  were  the  two  leading  staples.  These  were 
produced  principally  by  the  labor  of  negro  slaves.  There 
were  also  many  indentured  servants  at  the  South,  where 
the  dividing  lines  between  the  different  classes  were  most 
strongly  marked. 

Up  to  1700  the  history  of  each  colony  is  practically  that 
of  a  separate  unit.  Almost  all  the  colonies  had  trouble 
with  Indians  and  royal  governors.  Pirates,  rapacious  politi 
cians,  religious  matters,  or  witchcraft  were  sometimes 
sources  of  disturbance.  All  knew  the  hard  labor  and  the 
privations  involved  in  subduing  the  wilderness  and  making 
permanent  settlements  in  a  new  land.  History  tells  of 
the  abandonment  of  many  other  colonies  and  of  the  subju 
gation  of  many  other  races,  but  no  difficulty  and  no  foe 
daunted  this  Anglo-Saxon  stock. 

In  1700  the  population  of  New  England  was  estimated 
at  about  one  hundred  and  ten  thousand.  In  1754,  the  be 
ginning  of  the  French  and  Indian  War,  Connecticut  alone 
had  that  number,  while  all  New  England  probably  had 
at  this  time  nearly  four  hundred  thousand.  The  middle 
colonies  began  the  eighteenth  century  with  about  fifty- 
nine  thousand  and  grew  by  the  middle  of  the  century  to 
about  three  hundred  and  fifty-five  thousand.  During  the 
same  period,  the  southern  group  increased  from  about 
ninety  thousand  to  six  hundred  thousand.  By  1750  the 
thirteen  colonies  probably  had  a  total  population  of  nearly 


58  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

fourteen  hundred  thousand.     Since  no  census  was  taken 
until  1790,  these  figures  are  only  approximately  correct. 

Such  development  serves  to  show  the  trend  of  coming 
events.  This  remarkable  increase  in  population  soon 
caused  numbers  to  go  farther  west.  This  movement  re 
sulted  in  collision  with  the  French,  who  were  at  this  time 
holding  the  central  part  of  the  country,  from  the  Gulf  into 
Canada.  One  other  result  followed.  The  colonies  began 
to  seem  valuable  to  England  because  they  furnished  a 
market  for  English  manufactures  and  a  carrying  trade  for 
English  ships.  The  previous  comparative  insignificance  of 
the  colonies  and  the  trouble  in  England  had  served  to 
protect  them,  but  their  trade  had  now  assumed  a  proportion 
that  made  the  mother  country  realize  what  a  valuable  com 
mercial  asset  she  would  have  if  she  regulated  the  colonies 
in  her  own  interest. 

SUMMARY 

In  this  chapter  we  have  traced  the  history  of  American 
colonial  literature  from  the  foundation  of  the  Jamestown 
Colony  until  1754.  Before  1607  Chaucer,  Spenser,  and 
Shakespeare  had  written,  and  before  1620  the  King  James 
version  of  the  Bible  had  been  produced.  England  had, 
therefore,  a  wonderful  literature  before  her  colonies  came 
to  America.  They  were  the  heirs  of  all  that  the  English 
race  had  previously  accomplished  ;  and  they  brought  to 
these  shores  an  Elizabethan  initiative,  ingenuity,  and 
democratic  spirit. 

The  Virginia  colony  was  founded,  as  colonies  usually 
are,  for  a  commercial  reason.  The  Virginians  and  the 
other ,  southern  colonists  lived  more  by  agriculture,  were 
more  widely  scattered,  had  fewer  schools,  more  slaves,  and 
less  town  life  than  the  New  Englanders.  Under  the  in- 


SUMMARY  59 

fluence  of  a  commanding  clergy,  common  schools,  and  the 
stimulus  of  town  life,  the  New  England  colony  produced 
more  literature. 

The  chief  early  writers  of  Virginia  are:  (i)  Captain 
John  Smith,  who  described  the  country  and  the  Indians, 
and  gave  to  literature  the  story  of  Pocahontas,  thereby 
disclosing  a  new  world  to  the  imagination  of  writers;  (2) 
William  Strachey,  who  outranks  contemporary  colonial 
writers  in  describing  the  wrath  of  the  sea,  and  who  may 
even  have  furnished  a  suggestion  to  Shakespeare  for  The 
Tempest ;  (3)  two  poets,  (a)  George  Sandys,  who  trans 
lated  part  of  Ovid,  and  (b)  the  unknown  author  of  the 
elegy  on  Nathaniel  Bacon ;  and  (4)  Robert  Beverly  and 
William  Byrd,  who  gave  interesting  descriptions  of  early 
Virginia. 

The  chief  colonial  writers  of  New  England  are :  ( I )  William 
Bradford,  whose  History  of  Plymouth  Plantation  tells  the 
story  of  the  first  Pilgrim  colony;  (2)  John  Winthrop,  who 
wrote  in  his  Journal  the  early  history  of  the  Massachusetts 
Bay  Colony;  (3)  the  poets,  including  (a)  the  translators 
of  the  Bay  Psalm  Book,  the  first  volume  of  so-called  verse 
printed  in  the  British  American  colonies,  (b)  Wigglesworth, 
whose  Day  of  Doom,  was  a  poetic  exposition  of  Calvinistic 
theology,  (c)  Anne  Bradstreet,  who  wrote  a  small  amount  of 
genuine  poetry,  after  she  had  passed  from  the  influence  of 
the  "  fantastic  "  school  of  poets ;  (4)  Nathaniel  Ward,  the 
author  of  The  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam,  an  attempt  to 
mend  human  ways;  (5)  Samuel  Sewall,  New  England's 
greatest  colonial  diarist;  (6)  Cotton  Mather,  the  most 
famous  clerical  writer,  whose  Magnalia  is  a  compound  of 
early  colonial  history  and  biography,  sometimes  written  in 
a  "fantastic"  style;  (7)  Jonathan  Edwards,  America's 
greatest  metaphysician  and  theologian,  who  maintained 


60  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

that  the  action  of  the  human  will  is  determined  by  the 
strongest  motive,  that  the  substance  of  this  universe  is  noth 
ing  but  "  the  divine  Idea,"  communicated  to  human  con 
sciousness,  and  who  could  -invest  spiritual  truth  with  the 
beauty  of  the  Rose  of  Sharon  and  the  Lily  of  the  valleys. 

The  New  England  colonist  came  to  America  because 
of  religious  feeling.  His  religion  was  to  him  a  matter  of 
eternal  life  or  eternal  death.  From  the  modern  point  of 
view,  this  religion  may  seem  too  inflexibly  stern,  too  little 
illumined  by  the  spirit  of  love,  too  much  darkened  by  the 
shadow  of  eternal  punishment,  but  unless  that  religion  had 
communicated  something  of  its  own  dominating  inflexibility 
to  the  colonist,  he  would  never  have  braved  the  ocean,  the 
wilderness,  the  Indians ;  he  would  never  have  flung  the 
gauntlet  down  to  tyranny  at  Lexington  and  Concord. 

The  greatest  lesson  taught  by  colonial  literature,  by  men 
like  Bradford,  Winthrop,  Edwards,  and  the  New  England 
clergy  in  general,  is  moral  heroism,  the  determination  to 
follow  the  shining  path  of  the  Eternal  over  the  wave  and 
through  the  forest  to  a  new  temple  of  human  liberty. 
Their  aspiration,  endeavor,  suffering,  accomplishment, 
should  strengthen  our  faith  in  the  worth  of  those  spiritual 
realities  which  are  not  quoted  in  the  markets  of  the  world, 
but  which  alone  possess  imperishable  value. 


REFERENCES   FOR   FURTHER   STUDY 

HISTORICAL 

English  History.  —  In  either  Gardiner's  Students'*  History  of  Eng 
land,  Walker's  Essentials  in  English  History,  Andrews's  History  of 
England,  or  Cheney's  Short  History  of  England,  read  the  chapters 
dealing  with  the  time  of  Elizabeth,  James  I.,  Charles  I.,  the  Common 
wealth,  Charles  II.,  James  II.,  William  and  Mary,  Anne,  George  I.  and 


REFERENCES  FOR  FURTHER  STUDY  6 1 

II.  A  work  like  Halleck's  History  of  English  Literature,  covering 
these  periods,  should  be  read. 

American  History.  —  Read  the  account  from  the- earliest  times  to  the 
outbreak  of  the  French  and  Indian  War  in  any  of  the  following  :  — 

Thwaites's  The  Colonists,  1492-1750. 

Fisher's  Colonial  Era. 

Lodge's  A  Short  History  of  the  English  Colonies  in  America. 

Doyle's  The  English  in  America. 

Hart's  Essentials  in  American  History. 

Channing's  A  Students'*  History  of  the  United  States. 

Eggleston's  A  Larger  History  of  the  United  States  of  America. 

James  and  Sanford's  American  History. 

For  an  account  of  special  colonies,  consult  the  volumes  in  American 
Commonwealths  series,  and  also, 

Fiske's  Beginnings  of  New  England,  The  Dutch  and  Quaker  Colo 
nies  in  America,  Old  Virginia  and  Her  Neighbors. 

LITERARY 

Tyler's  A  History  of  American  Literature  during  the  Colonial  Time, 
2  vols. 

Otis's  American  Verse,  1625-1807. 

Richardson's  American  Literature,  2  vols. 

Trent's  A  History  of  American  Literature,  1607-1865. 

Wendell's  History  of  Literature  in  America. 

Narratives  of  Early  Virginia,  edited  by  Tyler. 

Bradford's  History  of  Plymouth  Plantation.  New  edition,  edited  by 
Davis.  (Scribner,  1908.) 

Winthrop's  Journal  ("History  of  New  England").  New  edition, 
edited  by  Hosmer,  2  vols.,  (Scribner,  1908.) 

Chamberlain's  Samuel  Sewall  and  the  World  He  Lived  in. 

Lodge's  "A  Puritan  Pepys"  (Sewall)  in  Studies  in  History. 

Campbell's  Anne  Bradstreet  and  her  Time. 

TwichelPs/Mrt  Winthrop. 

Walker's  Thomas  Hooker. 

Wendell's  Life  of  Cotton  Mather. 

Allen's  Life  of  Jonathan  Edwards. 

Gardiner's  Jonathan  Edwards,  a  Retrospect. 


COLONIAL  LITERATURE 


SUGGESTED   READINGS 

The  following  volumes  of  selections  from  American  Literature  will 
be  referred  to  either  by  the  last  name  of  the  author,  or,  if  there  are  more 
authors  than  one,  by  the  initials  of  the  last  names  :  — 

Cairns's  Selections  from  Early  American  Writers,  1607-1800.     (Mac- 

millan.) 

Trent  and  Wells's  Colonial  Prose  and  Poetry,  3  vols.,  1607-1775. 

(Crowell.) 

Stedman  and  Hutchinson's  A  Library  of  American  Literature,  1608- 

1890,  H  vols.     (Benjamin.) 

Carpenter's  American  Prose  Selections.     (Macmillan.) 

Trent's  Southern   Writers  :  Selections  in  Prose  and  Verse.     (Mac 

millan.) 

At  least  one  of  the  selections  indicated  for  each  author  shou 

read. 

John  Smith.  —  The  Beginnings  of  Jamestown  (from  A  True  Rela 
tion  of  Virginia,  1608)  ;  The  Religious  Observances  of  the  Indians 
(from  A  Map  of  Virginia,  published  in  1612),  Cairns,  pp.  2-4,  10-14; 
The  Romance  of  Pocahontas  (from  The  General  History  of  Virginia, 
1624),  S.  &  H.,  Vol.  I.,  pp.  10-17  ;  T.  &  W.,  Vol.  I.,  pp.  12-22. 

William  Strachey.  —  Read  the  selection  from  A  True  Repertory  of 
the  Wrack  and  Redemption  of  Sir  Thomas  Gates,  in  Cairns,  19-26. 

Poetry  in  the  Virginian  Colony.  —  For  George  Sandys,  see  pp.  51-58 
in  Vol.  I.  of  Tyler's  A  History  of  American  Literature  during  the 
Colonial  Time. 

For  the  elegy  on  the  death  of  Nathaniel  Bacon,  see  Tyler,  Vol.  I., 
78,  79  ;  Cairns,  185-188;  T.  &  W.,  II.,  166-169;  S.  &  H.,  I.,  456-458; 
Trent,  12-14. 

Descriptions  of  Virginia.  —  The  best  selection  from  Beverly's  History 
and  Present  State  of  Virginia  may  be  found  in  T.  &  W.,  II.,  354-360- 
See  also  Trent,  16-18;  S.  &  H.,  II.,  270-272. 

For  selections  from  Byrd's  History  of  the  Dividing  Line,  see  Cairns, 
passim,  259-272;  Trent,  19-22;  T.  &  W.,  III.,  23-32;  S.  &  H.,  II., 
302-305. 

William  Bradford.  —  The  Voyage  of  the  Mayflower,  Cairns,  31-35? 
Early  Difficulties  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  T.  &  W..  I.,  42-45;  The 
Communal  System  Abandoned,  T.  &  W.,  I.,  46-49:  The  Landing  of 
the  Pilgrims  and  their  Settlement  at  Plymouth,  S.  &  H.,  I.,  124-130. 


QUESTIONS  AND   SUGGESTIONS  63 

John  Winthrop.  —  Twenty-five  entries  from  his  Journal  or  History 
of  New  England are  given  in  Cairns,  44-48,  and  fourteen  in  T.  &  W., 
I.,  99-105. 

His  famous  speech  on  Liberty  may  be  found  in  T.  &  W.,  I.,  106-1 16 ; 
in  S.  &  H.,  I.,  302-303 ;  and  in  Cairns,  50-53. 

Early  New  England  Verse.  —  The  selection  in  the  text  (p.  38)  from 
the  Bay  Psalm  Book  is  sufficient. 

For  Wiggles  worth's  Day  of  Doom,  see  Cairns,  166-177  >  T.  &  W., 
II.,  54-60;  S.  &  H.,  passim,  II.,  3-16. 

Anne  Bradstreet's  best  poem,  Contemplations,  may  be  found  in 
Cairns,  154-162 ;  T.  &  W.,  I.,  280-283 ;  S.  &  H.,  I.,  314,  315. 

Ward's  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam.  —  His  view  of  religious  toleration 
is  given  in  Cairns,  113-118,  and  T.  &  W.,  I.,  253-259.  For  the  satiric 
essay  on  women's  fashions,  see  Cairns,  119-124;  T.  &  W.,  I.,  260-266; 
S.  &  H.  I.,  276-280. 

Samuel  Sewall.  —  Cairns,  240-243,  gives  from  the  Diary  the  events 
of  a  month.  Notes  on  the  Witchcraft  Persecution  and  his  prayer  of 
repentance  for  "the  blame  and  shame  of  it"  may  be  found  in  T. 
&  W.,  II.,  294-296.  The  record  of  his  courtship  of  Madam  Win 
throp  is  given  in  Cairns,  245-249 ;  T.  &  W.,  II.,  304-319  ;  and  S.  &  H., 
II.,  192-200.  For  his  early  anti-slavery  tract,  see  T.  &  W.,  II.,  320- 
326;  S.  &  H.,  II.,  189-192. 

Cotton  Mather.  —  His  fantastic  life  of  Mr.  Ralph  Partridge  from  the 
Magnalia  is  given  in  Cairns,  228,  229.  The  interesting  story  of  the 
New  England  argonaut,  Sir  William  Phips,  may  be  found  in  T.  &  W., 
II.,  257-266,  and  in  S,  &  H.,  II.,  143-149-  One  of  his  best  biographies 
is  that  of  Thomas  Hooker,  S.  &  H.,  II.,  149-156. 

Jonathan  Edwards.  —  For  a  specimen  of  an  almost  poetic  exposition 
of  tke  divine  love,  read  the  selection  in  Cairns,  280,  281  ;  T.  &  W., 
III..  148,  149;  S.  &  H  ,  II.,  374;  and  Carpenter,  16,  17,  beginning, 
"  I  am  the  Rose  of  Sharon  and  the  Lily  of  the  valleys."  Selections 
from  his  Freedom  of  the  Will are  given  in  Cairns,  291-294;  T.  &  W., 
III.,  185-187;  and  S.  &  H.,  II.,  404-407  (the  best). 

QUESTIONS   AND   SUGGESTIONS 

Is  Captain  John  Smith  more  remarkable  for  chronicling  what 
passed  before  his  senses  or  for  explaining  what  he  saw?  How  does 
his  account  of  the  Indians  (p.  18  of  this  text)  compare  with  modern 
accounts  ?  Is  he  apparently  a  novice,  or  somewhat  skilled  in  writing 


64  COLONIAL  LITERATURE 

prose  ?    Does  he  seem  to  you  to  be  a  romancer  or  a  narrator  of  a  plain 
unvarnished  tale  ? 

Compare  Strachey's  storm  at  sea  with  Act  L  of  Shakespeare's 
Tempest.  In  what  part  of  this  Act  and  under  what  circumstances 
does  he  mention  u  the  still-vex'd  Bermoothes  "  ? 

Compare  the  ability  of  the  three  great  early  colonizers,  Smith,  Brad 
ford,  and  Winthrop,  in  writing  narrative  prose.  Smith's  story  of 
Pocahontas  is  easily  accessible.  Those  who  can  find  the  complete 
works  of  Bradford  and  Winthrop  may  select  from  Bradford  for  com 
parison  his  story  of  Squanto,  the.  Pilgrims1  tame  Indian.  Winthrop's 
Journal  contains  many  specimens  of  brief  narrative,  such  as  the  story 
of  the  voyage  across  the  Atlantic  from  March  29  to  June  14,  1630;  of 
Winthrop's  losing  himself  in  the  wood,  October  n,  1631  ;  of  shipwreck 
on  the  Isle  of  Shoals,  August  16,  1635  ;  of  an  indentured  servant,  March 
8,  1636;  ot  an  adventure  with  Indians,  July  20-30,  August  24,  and 
October  8,  1636.  Those  without  opportunity  to  consult  the  works  of 
Bradford  and  Winthrop  will  find  in  the  books. of  selections  sufficient 
material  for  comparison.  . 

Is  brevity  or'  prolixity  a  quality  of  these  early  narrators  ?  What 
English  prose  written  before  1640  is  superior  to  the  work  of  these  three 
men  ?  Why  is  it  especially  important  for  Americans  to  know  something 
of  their  writings  ?  What  advance  in  prose  narrative  do  you  find  in 
Beverly  and  Byrd  ? 

What  characteristic  of  a  famous  English  prose  writer  of  the  nineteenth 
century  is  noticeable  in  Ward's  essay  on  fashions  ? 

Why  could  fine  poetry  not  be  reasonably  expected  in  early  Virginia 
and  New  England  ?  What  are  some  of  the  Calvinistic  tenets  ex 
pounded  in  Wigglesworth's  Day  of  Doom?  Choose  the  best  two 
short  selections  of  colonial  poetry. 

What  are  some  of  the  qualifications  of  a  good  diarist  ?  Which  oi 
these  do  you  find  in  the  Diary  of  SamueKSewall  ? 

Point  out  some  of  the  fantastic  prose  expressions  of  Cotton  Mather. 
Compare  his  narrative  of  Captain  Phips  with  the  work  of  Smith,  Brad 
ford,  and  Winthrop,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  Beverly  and  Byrd,  01 
other. 

Compare  the   theology  in  Edwards's  "Rose  of  Sharon"  selection 
(p.    54)  with  that  in  WiggleswortrTs  Day  of  Doom.     Why  may  t 
selection  from  Edwards  be  called  a  «  poetic  exposition  of  the  divine 
love"  ?    What  is  bis  view  of  the  freedom  of  the  will  ? 


CHAPTER   II 
THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

Progress  toward  Nationality.  —  The  French  and  Indian 
War,  which  began  in  1/54,  served  its  purpose  in  making 
the  colonists  feel  that  they  were  one  people.  At  this  time 
most  of  them  were  living  on  the  seacoast  from  Georgia  to 
Maine,  and  had  not  yet  even  crossed  the  great  Appalachian 
range  of  mountains.  The  chief  men  of  one  colony  knew 
little  of  the  leaders  in  the  other  colonies.  This  war  made 
George  Washington  known  outside  of  Virginia.  There 
was'not  much  interchange  of  literature  between  the  two  lead 
ing  colonies,  Virginia  and  Massachusetts.  Prior  to  this 
time,  the  other  colonies  had  not  produced  much  that  had 
literary  value.  No  national  literature  could  be  written 
until  the  colonists  were  welded  together. 

The  French  and  Indian  War,  which  decided  whether 
France  or  England  was  to  be,  supreme  in  America,  exposed 
the  colonists  to  a  common  danger.  They  fought  side  by 
side  against  the  French  and  Indians,  and  learned  that  the 
defeat  of  one  was  the  defeat  of  all.  After  a  desperate 
struggle  France  lost,  and  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  was  dom 
inant  on  the  new  continent.  By  the  treaty  of  Paris,  signed 
in  1763,  England  became  the  possessor  of  Canada  and  the 
land  east  of  the  Mississippi  River. 

The  Revolution.  —  All  of  the  colonies  had  been  under 
English  rule,  although  they  had  in  large  part  managed  in 
one  way  or  another  to  govern  themselves.  At  the  close 
of  the  French  and  Indian  War,  the  colonists  had  not 

65 


66  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

thought  of  breaking  away  from  England,  although  they 
had  learned  the  lesson  of  union  against  a  common  foe. 
George  III.  came  to  the  throne  in  1760.  By  temperament 
he  was  unusually  adapted  to  play  his  part  in  changing  the 
New  World's  history.  He  was  determined  to  rule  accord 
ing  to  his  own  personal  inclinations.  He  dominated  his 
cabinet  and  controlled  Parliament  by  bribery.  He  decided 
that  the  American  colonies  should  feel  the  weight  of  his 
authority,  and  in  1763  his  prime  minister,  George  Grenville, 
undertook  to  execute  measures  in  restraint  of  colonial 
trade.  Numbers  of  commodities,  like  tobacco,  for  instance, 
could  not  be  traded  with  France  or  Spain  or  Holland,  but 
must  be  sent  to  England.  If  there  was  any  profit  to  be 
made  in  selling  goods  to  foreign  nations,  England  would 
make  that  profit.  He  also  planned  to  tax  the  colonists  and 
to  quarter  British  troops  among  them.  These  measures 
aroused  the  colonies  to  armed  resistance  and  led  to  the 
Revolutionary  War,  which  began  in  1775. 

Freneau  (p.  96),  a  poet  of  the  Revolution,  thus  expresses 
in  verse  some  of  these  events :  — 

«  When  a  certain  great  king,  whose  initial  is  G, 
Shall  force  stamps  upon  paper  and  folks  to  drink  tea ; 
When  these  folks  burn  his  tea  and  stampt  paper  like  stubble, 
You  may  guess  that  this  king  is  then  coming  to  trouble." 

THE  ESSAYISTS 

The  pen  helped  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  sword  and  to 
arouse  and  prolong  the  enthusiasm  of  those  who  had  taken 
arms.  Before  the  battle  of  Lexington  (i/75)»  writers  were 
busy  on  both  sides  of  the  dispute,  for  no  great  movement 
begins  without  opposition.  Many  colonists  did  not  favor 
resistance  to  England.  Even  at  the  time  of  the  first  battle, 


THE  ESSAYISTS 


67 


comparatively  few  wished  absolute   separation  from  the 
mother  country. 

Thomas  Paine  (173 7-1 809)  was  an  Englishman  who  came 
to  America  in  1774  and  speedily  made  himself  master  of 
colonial  thought  and  feeling. 
Early  in  1776  he  published  a 
pamphlet  entitled  Common 
Sense,  which  advocated  com 
plete  political  independence  of 
England.  The  sledge  hammer 
blows  which  he  struck  hastened 
the  Declaration  of  Independence. 
Note  the  energy,  the  directness, 
and  the  employment  of  the  con 
crete  method  in  the  following  :  — 

"  But  Britain  is  the  parent  country, 
say  some.  Then  the  more  shame  upon 
her  conduct.  Even  brutes  do  not  de 
vour  their  young,  nor  savages  make  war  upon  their  families  ;  wherefore, 
the  assertion,  if  true,  turns  to  her  reproach.  .  .  .  This  new  world  hath 
been  the  asylum  for  the  persecuted  lovers  of  civil  and  religious  liberty 
from  every  part  of  Europe.  Hither  have  they  fled,  not  from  the  tender 
embraces  of  the  mother,  but  from  the  cruelty  of  the  monster ;  and  it  is 
so  far  true  of  England,  that  the  same  tyranny  which  drove  the  first  emi 
grants  from  home,  pursues  their  descendants  still." 

In  the  latter  part  of  1776  Washington  wrote,  "  If  every 
nerve  is  not  strained  to  recruit  the  new  army  with  all  pos 
sible  expedition,  I  think  the  game  is  pretty  nearly  up."  In 
those  gloomy  days,  sharing  the  privations  of  the  army, 
Thomas  Paine  wrote  the  first  number  of  an  irregularly 
issued  periodical,  known  as  the  Crisis,  beginning  :  — 

"  These  are  the  times  that  try  men's  souls.  The  summer  soldier  and 
the  sunshine  patriot  will,  in  this,  crisis,  shrink  from  the  service  of  his 


THOMAS    PAINE 


68  THE   EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

country ;  but  he  that  stands  it  now,  deserves  the  love  and  thanks  of 
man  and  woman." 

Some  have  said  that  the  pen  of  Thomas  Paine  was  worth 
more  to  the  cause  of  liberty  than  twenty  thousand  men. 
In  the  darkest  hours  he  inspired  the  colonists  with  hope  and 
enthusiasm.  Whenever  the  times  seemed  to  demand  an 
other  number  of  the  Crisis,  it  was  forthcoming.  Sixteen 
of  these  appeared  during  the  progress  of  the  struggle  for 
liberty.  He  had  an  almost  Shakespearean  intuition  of  what 
would  appeal  to  the  exigencies  of  each  case.  After  the 
Americans  had  triumphed,  he  went  abroad  to  aid  the 
French,  saying,  "Where  Liberty  is  not,  there  is  my  home." 
He  died  in  America  in  1809.  He  is  unfortunately  more 
remembered  for  his  skeptical  Age  of  Reason  than  for  his 
splendid  services  to  the  cause  of  liberty. 

Thomas  Jefferson  (1743-1826),  the  third  President  of  the 
United  States,  wrote  much  political  prose  and  many  letters, 
which  have  been  gathered  into   ten    large 
volumes.     Ignoring  these,  he  left  direc 
tions  that  the  words,   "  Author   of   the 
Declaration     of     American     Independ 
ence,"    should    immediately   follow   his 
name  on   his    monument.      No    other 
American     prose    writer    has,    in    an 
equal  number  of  words,  yet  surpassed 
this  Declaration  of  Independence. 
Its    influence    has     encircled    the 
world  and  modified  the  opinions   of 
THOMAS  JEFFERSON         nations  as  widely  separated   as   the 

French  and  the  Japanese. 

Jefferson  may  have  borrowed  some  of  his. ideas  from 
Magna  Charta  (1215)  and  the  Petition  of  Right  (1628); 
he  may  have  incorporated  in  this  Declaration  the  yearnings 


THE  ESSAYISTS  69 

that  thousands  of  human  souls  had  already  felt,  but  he 
voiced  those  yearnings  so  well  that  his  utterances  have 
become  classic.  It  has  been  said  that  he  "  poured  the  soul  of 
the  continent "  into  that  Declaration,  but  he  did  more  than 
that  He  poured  into  it  the  soul  of  all  freedom-loving 
humanity,  and  he  was  accepted  as  the  spokesman  of  the 
dweller  on  the  Seine  as  enthusiastically  as  of  the  revolu 
tionists  in  America.  Those  who  have  misconstrued  the 
meaning  of  his  famous  expression,  "All  men  are  created 
equal"  have  been  met  with  the  adequate  reply,  "No 
intelligent  man  has  ever  misconstrued  it  except  intention 
ally." 

America  has  no  Beowulf  celebrating  the  slaying  of 
land-devastating  monsters,  but  she  has  in  this  Declaration 
a  deathless  battle  song  against  the  monsters  that  would 
throttle  Liberty.  Outside  of  Holy  Writ,  what  words  are 
more  familiar  to  our  ears  than  these  ?  — 

"  We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident :  That  all  men  are  created 
equal ;  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  unalienable 
rights ;  that  among  these  are  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness. 
That,  to  secure  these  rights,  governments  are  instituted  among  men, 
deriving  their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed." 

Every  student  will  find  his  comprehension  of  American 
literature  aided  by  a  careful  study  of  this  Declaration.  This 
trumpet-tongued  declaration  of  the  fact  that  every  man  has 
an  equal  right  with  every  other  man  to  his  own  life,  liberty, 
and  the  pursuit  of  happiness  has  served  as  an  ideal  to  in 
spire  some  of  the  best  things  in  our  literature.  This  ideal 
has  not  yet  been  completely  reached,  but  it  is  finding  ex 
pression  in  every  effort  for  the  social  and  moral  improve 
ments  of  our  population.  Jefferson  went  a  step  beyond 
the  old  Puritans  in  maintaining  that  happiness  is  a  worthy 
object  of  pursuit.  Modern  altruists  are  also  working  on 


70  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

this  line,  demanding  a  fuller  moral  and  industrial  liberty, 
and  endeavoring  to  develop  a  more  widespread  capacity  for 
happiness. 

Alexander  Hamilton  (1757-1804),  because  of  his  wonder 
ful  youthful  precocity,  reminds  us  of  Jonathan  Edwards 
(p.  50).     In  1 774,  at  the  age  of  seven 
teen,  Hamilton  wrote  in  answer  to  a 
Tory  who  maintained  that  England 
had  given  New  York  no  charter  of 
rights,  and  that  she  could  not  com- 
\       plain  that  her  rights  had  been 
(     taken  away  :  — 

"  The  sacred  rights  of  mankind  are 
not  to  be  rummaged  for  among  old 
parchments  or  musty  records.  They 
are  written  as  with  a  sunbeam,  in  the 
whole  volume  of  human  nature,  by 

ALEXANDER    HAMILTON  -*•    •    .          .         ,/•  , 

the  hand  of  the   Divinity  itself,  and 
can  never  be  erased  or  obscured  by  mortal  power." 

A  profound  student  of  American  constitutional  history 
says  of  Hamilton's  pamphlets :  "They  show  great  maturity, 
a  more  remarkable  maturity  than  has  ever  been  exhibited 
by  any  other  person,  at  so  early  an  age,  in  the  same  de 
partment  of  thought." 

After  the  Americans  were  victorious  in  the  war,  Hamil 
ton  suggested  that  a  constitutional  convention  be  called. 
For  seven  years  this  suggestion  was  not  followed,  but  in 
1787  delegates  met  from  various  states  and  framed  a 
federal  constitution  to  be  submitted  to  the  states  for  rati 
fication.  Hamilton  was  one  of  the  leading  delegates. 
After  the  convention  had  completed  its  work,  it  seemed 
probable  that  the  states  would  reject  the  proposed  consti 
tution.  To  win  its  acceptance,  Hamilton,  in  collaboration 


THE  ORATORS  71 

with  James  Madison  (175 1-1836)  and  John  Jay  (1745- 1829), 
wrote  the  famous  Federalist  papers.  There  were  eighty- 
five  of  these,  but  Hamilton  wrote  more  than  both  of  his 
associates  together.  These  papers  have  been  collected  into 
a  volume,  and  to  this  day  they  form  a  standard  commentary 
on  our  Constitution.  This  work  and  Hamilton's  eloquence 
before  the  New  York  convention  for  ratification  helped  to 
carry  the  day  for  the  Constitution  and  to  terminate  a  period 
of  dissension  which  was  tending  toward  anarchy. 


THE  ORATORS 

There  are  times  in  the  history  of  a  nation  when  there  is 
unusual  need  for  the  orator  to  persuade,  to  arouse,  and  to 
encourage  his  countrymen.  Many  influential  colonists  dis 
approved  of  the  Revolution ;  they  wrote  against  it  and 
talked  against  it.  When  the  war  progressed  slowly,  entail 
ing  not  only  severe  pecuniary  loss  but  also  actual  suffering 
to  the  revolutionists,  many  lost  their  former  enthusiasm  and 
were  willing  to  have  peace  at  any  price.  At  this  period  in 
our  history  the  orator  was  as  necessary  as  the  soldier. 
Orators  helped  to  launch  the  Revolution,  to  continue  the 
war,  and,  after  it  was  finished,  to  give  the  country  united 
constitutional  government.  It  will  be  instructive  to  make 
the  acquaintance  of  some  of  these  orators  and  to  learn  the 
secret  of  their  power. 

James  Otis  (1725-1783)  was  born  in  Massachusetts  and 
educated  at  Harvard.  He  studied  literature  for  two  years 
after  he  graduated  and  then  became  a  lawyer.  He  was 
appointed  to  the  position  of  king's  advocate-general,  a 
high-salaried  office.  There  came  an  order  from  England, 
allowing  the  king's  officers  to  search  the  houses  of  Ameri 
cans  at  any  time  on  mere  suspicion  of  the  concealment  of 


72  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

smuggled  goods.  Otis  resigned  his  office  and  took  the  side 
of  the  colonists,  attacking  the  constitutionality  of  a  law 
that  allowed  the  right  of  unlimited  search  and  that  was 
really  designed  to  curtail  the  trade  of  the 
colonies.  He  had  the  advantage  of  many 
modern  orators  in  having  something  to 
say  on  his  subject,  in  feeling  deeply  in 
terested  in  it,  and  in  talking  to  people 
who  were  also  interested  in  the  same 
thing.  Without  these  three  essentials, 
there  cannot  be  oratory  of  the 
highest  kind.  We  can  imagine  the 
voice  of  Otis  trembling  with  feeling 
as  he  said  in  1 76 1  :  — 

"  Now  one  of  the  most  essential  branches 

JAMES  OTIS  °^  English  liberty  is  the  freedom  of  one's 

house.     A  man's  house  is  his  castle ;    and 

whilst  he  is  quiet,  he  is  as  well  guarded  as  a  prince  in  his  castle.  This 
writ,  if  it  should  be  declared  legal,  would  totally  annihilate  this  privi 
lege.  Custom-house  officers  may  enter  our  houses,  when  they  please ; 
we  are  commanded  to  permit  their  entry.  Their  menial  servants  may 
enter,  may  break  locks,  bars,  and  everything  in  their  way ;  and  whether 
they  break  through  malice  or  revenge,  no  man,  no  court,  can  inquire." 

We  may  to-day  be  more  interested  in  other  things  than 
in  the  homes  and  unrestricted  trade  of  our  colonial  an 
cestors,  but  Otis  was  willing  to  give  up  a  lucrative  office 
to  speak  for  the  rights  of  the  humblest  cottager.  He,  like 
the  majority  of  the  orators  of  the  Revolution,  also  possessed 
another  quality,  often  foreign  to  the  modern  orator.  What 
this  quality  is  will  appear  in  this  quotation  from  his 
speech :  — 

"  Let  the  consequences  be  what  they  will,  I  am  determined  to  pro 
ceed.  The  only  principles  of  public  conduct  that  are  worthy  of  a  gen 
tleman  or  a  man  are  to  sacrifice  estate,  ease,  health,  and  applause,  and 


THE  ORATORS 


73 


even  life,  to  the  sacred  calls  of  his  country.  These  manly  sentiments,  in 
private  life,  make  the  good  citizen ;  in  public  life,  the  patriot  and  the 
hero." 

John  Adams,  who  became  the  second  President  of  the 
United  States,  listened  to  this  speech  for  five  hours,  and 
called  Otis  "a  flame  of  fire."  "  Then  and  there,"  said 
Adams,  with  pardonable  exaggeration,  "  the  child  Inde 
pendence  was  born." 

Patrick  Henry  (1736-1799),  a   young  Virginia  lawyer, 
stood  before  the  First  Continental   Con 
gress,  in  1774,  saying:  — 

"Where  are  your  landmarks,  your  bound 
aries  of  Colonies  ?     The  distinctions  between 
Virginians,  New  Yorkers,  and  New  Englanders 
are   no  more.     I   am  not  a  Virginian,  but  an 
American." 

These  words  had  electrical  effect 
on  the  minds  of  his  listeners,  and 
helped  to  weld  the  colonies  together. 
In  1775  we  can  hear  him  again 
speaking  before  a  Virginian  Con 
vention  of  Delegates :  — 

"  Mr.  President,  it  is  natural  to  man  to  indulge  in  the  illusions  of 
hope.  We  are  apt  to  shut  our  eyes  against  a  painful  truth,  and  listen 
to  the  song  of  that  siren,  till  she  transforms  us  into  beasts.  .  .  . 

"  I  have  but  one  lamp  by  which  my  feet  are  guided  ;  and  that  is  the 
lamp  of  experience.  I  know  of  no  way  of  judging  of  the  future  but  by 
the  past.  And  judging  by  the  past,  I  wish  to  know  what  there  has 
been  in  the  conduct  of  the  British  ministry  for  the  last  ten  years,  to 
justify  those  hopes  with  which  gentlemen  have  been  pleased  to  solace 
themselves  and  the  House  ?  .  .  . 

"  Why  stand  we  here  idle  ?  What  is  it  that  gentlemen  wish  ?  What 
would  they  have  ?  Is  life  so  dear,  or  peace  so  sweet,  as  to  be  purchased 
at  the  price  of  chains  and  slavery  ?  Forbid  it,  Almighty  God  !  I  know 
not  what  course  others  may  take  ;  but  as  for  me,  give  me  liberty  or 
me  death. " 


PATRICK   HENRY 


74  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  these  words  have 
communicated  to  the  entire  American  nation  an  intenser 
desire  for  liberty,  that  their  effect  has  not  yet  passed  away, 
and  that  they  may  during  the  coming  centuries  serve  to 
awaken  Americans  in  many  a  crisis. 

Samuel  Adams  (1722-1803),  a  Bostonian  and  graduate 
of  Harvard,  probably  gave  his  time  in  fuller  measure  to 
the  cause  of  independence  than  any  other 
writer  or  speaker.  For  nine  years  he  was 
a  member  of  the  Continental  Congress. 
When  there  was  talk  of  peace  between 
the  colonies  and  the  mother  country,  he 
had  the  distinction  of  being  one  of  two 
Americans  for  whom  England  pro 
claimed  in  advance  that  there  would 
be  no  amnesty  granted.  We  can  seem 
to  hear  him  in  1776  in  the  Philadel- 
phia  State  House,  replying  to  the 
argument  that  the  colonists  should  obey  England,  since 
they  were  her  children  :  — 

"  Who  among  you,  my  countrymen,  that  is  a  father,  would  claim  au 
thority  to  make  your  child  a  slave  because  you  had  nourished  him  in 
his  infancy  ?  " 

After  he  had  signed  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
he  spoke  to  the  Pennsylvanians  like  a  Puritan  of  old :  — 

"We  have  explored  the  temple  of  royalty,  and  found  that  the  idol 
we  have  bowed  down  to  has  eyes  which  see  not,  ears  that  hear  not  our 
prayer,  and  a  heart  like  the  nether  millstone.  We  have  this  day  restored 
the  Sovereign,  to  whom  alone  men  ought  to  be  obedient.  He  reigns 
in  heaven,  and  with  a  propitious  eye  beholds  His  subjects  assuming  that 
freedom  of  thought  and  dignity  of  self-direction  which  He  bestowed  on 
them." 


THE  ORATORS  75 

These  sentences  plainly  show  the  influence  of  biblical 
thought  and  diction.  A  century  before,  this  compound  of 
patriot,  politician,  orator,  and  statesman  would  also  have 
been  a  clergyman. 

An  examination  of  these  three  typical  orators  of  the  Rev 
olution  will  show  that  they  gained  their  power  (i)  from  in 
tense  interest  in  their  subject  matter,  (2)  from  masterful 
knowledge  of  that  matter,  due  either  to  first-hand  acquaint 
ance  with  it  or  to  liberal  culture  or  to  both,  (3)  from  the 
fact  that  the  subject  of  their  orations  appealed  forcibly 
to  the  interest  of  that  special  time,  (4)  from  their  character 
and  personality.  Most  of  what  they  said  makes  dry  read 
ing  to-day,  but  we  shall  occasionally  find  passages,  like  Pat 
rick  Henry's  apotheosis  of  liberty,  which  speak  to  the  ear 
of  all  time  and  which  have  in  them  something  of  a  Homeric 
or  Miltonic  ring. 

Increasing  Influence  of  the  Legal  Profession.  —  Not  one 
of  the  great  orators  of  the  Revolution  was  a  clergyman. 
The  power  of  the  clergy  in  political  affairs  was  declining, 
while  the  legal  profession  was  becoming  more  and  more 
influential.  James  Otis,  Patrick  Henry,  Alexander  Ham 
ilton,  and  John  Jay  (p.  71)  were  lawyers.  Life  was  becom 
ing  more  diversified,  and  there  were  avenues  other  than 
theology  attractive  to  the  educated  man.  At  the  same 
time,  we  must  remember  that  the  clergy  have  never 
ceased  to  be  a  mighty  power  in  American  life.  They  were 
not  silent  or  uninfluential  during  the  Revolution.  Soon 
after  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  John  Adams  wrote  from 
Philadelphia  to  his  wife  in  Boston,  asking,  "  Does  Mr. 
Wibird  preach  against  oppression  and  other  cardinal  vices 
of  the  time?  Tell  him  the  clergy  here  of  every  de 
nomination,  not  excepting  the  Episcopalian,  thunder  and 
lighten  every  Sabbath." 


THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 


BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN,  1706-1790 

Autobiography  and  Life.  —  Franklin's  Autobiography 
stands  first  among  works  of  its  kind  in  American  literature. 
The  young  person  who  does  not  read  it  misses  both  profit 
and  entertainment.  Some  critics  have  called  it  "the 
equal  of  Robinson  Crusoe,  one  of  the  few  everlasting 
books  in  the  English  language."  In  this  small  volume, 
begun  in  1771,  Franklin  tells  us  that  he  was  born  in  Boston 
in  1706,  one  of  the  seventeen  children  of  a  poor  tallow 
chandler,  that  his  branch  of  the  Franklin  family  had  lived 
for  three  hundred  years  or  more  in  the  village  of  Ecton, 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  77 

Northamptonshire,  where  the  head  of  the  family,  in  Queen 
Mary's  reign,  read  from  an  English  Bible  concealed  under  a 
stool,  while  a  child  watched  for  the  coming  of  the  officers. 
He  relates  how  he  attended  school  from  the  age  of  eight  to 
ten,  when  he  had  to  leave  to  help  his  father  mold  and  wick 
candles.  His  meager  schooling  was  in  striking  contrast  to 
the  Harvard  education  of  Cotton  Mather  and  the  Yale 
training  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  who  was  only  three  years 
Franklin's  senior.  But  no  man  reaches  Franklin's  fame 
without  an  education.  His  early  efforts  to  secure  this  are 
worth  giving  in  his  own  language  :  — 

"  From  a  child  I  was  fond  of  reading,  and  all  the  little  money  that 
came  into  my  hands  was  ever  laid  out  in  books.  Pleased  with  the  Pil 
grim's  Progress,  my  first  collection  was  of  John  Bunyan's  works  in  sep 
arate  little  volumes.  .  .  .  Plutarch's  Lives  there  was  in  which  I  read 
abundantly,  and  I  still  think  that  time  spent  to  great  advantage.  There 
was  also  a  book  of  De  Foe's,  called  an  Essay  on  Projects,  and  another 
of  Dr.  Mather's,  called  Essays  to  do  Good,  which  perhaps  gave  me  a  turn 
of  thinking  that  had  an  influence  on  some  of  the  principal  future  events 
of  my  life.  .  .  .  Often  I  sat  up  in  my  room  reading  the  greatest  part 
of  the  night." 

He  relates  how  he  taught  himself  to  write  by  reading 
and  reproducing  in  his  own1  language  the  papers  from 
Addison's  Spectator.  Franklin  says  that  the  "  little  abil 
ity  "  in  writing,  developed  through  his  self-imposed  tasks, 
was  a  principal  means  of  his  advancement  in  after  life. 

He  learned  the  printer's  trade  in  Boston,  and  ran  away 
at  the  age  of  seventeen  to  Philadelphia,  where  he  worked 
at  the  same  trade.  Keith,  the  proprietary  governor,  took 
satanic  pleasure  in  offering  to  purchase  a  printing  outfit 
for  the  eighteen-year-old  boy,  to  make  him  independent. 
Keith  sent  the  boy  to  London  to  purchase  this  outfit, 
assuring  him  that  the  proper  letters  to  defray  the  cost 
would  be  sent  on  the  same  ship.  No  such  letters  were 


78  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

ever  written,  and  the  boy  found  himself  without  money 
three  thousand  miles  from  home.  By  working  at  the 
printer's  trade  he  supported  himself  for  eighteen  months 
in  London.  He  relates  how  his  companions  at  the  press 
drank  six  pints  of  strong  beer  a  day,  while  he  proved  that 
the  "  Water- American,"  as  he  was  called,  was  stronger 
than  any  of  them.  The  workmen  insisted  that  he  should 
contribute  to  the  general  fund  for  drink.  He  refused,  but 
so  many  things  happened  to  his  type  whenever  he  left  the 
room  that  he  came  to  the  following  conclusion :  "  Notwith 
standing  the  master's  protection,  I  found  myself  oblig'd  to 
comply  and  pay  the  money,  convinc'd  of  the  folly  of  being 
on  ill  terms  with  those  one  is  to  live  with  continually." 
Such  comments  on  the  best  ways  of  dealing  with  human 
nature  are  frequent  in  the  Autobiography. 

At  the  age  of  twenty,  he  returned  to  Philadelphia,  much 
wiser  for  his  experience.  Here  he  soon  had  a  printing 
establishment  of  his  own.  By  remarkable  industry  he  had 
at  the  age  of  forty-two  made  sufficient  money  to  be  able  to 
retire  from  the  active  administration  of  this  business.  He 
defined  leisure  as  "time  for  doing  something  useful." 
When  he  secured  this  leisure,  he  used  it  principally  for  the 
benefit  of  others.  For  this  reason,  he  could  write  in  his 
Autobiography  at  the  age  of  seventy-six:  — 

"...  were  it  offered  to  my  choice,  I  should  have  no  objection  to  a 
repetition  of  the  same  life  from  its  beginning,  only  asking  the  advantages 
authors  have  in  a  second  edition,  to  correct  some  faults  of  the  first.  So 
I  might,  besides  correcting  the  faults,  change  some  sinister  accidents 
and  events  of  it  for  others  more  favorable.  But  though  this  were 
denied,  I  should  still  accept  the  offer.  Since  such  a  repetition  is  not  to 
be  expected,  the  next  thing  like  living  one's  life  over  again  seems  to  be 
a  recollection  of  that  life." 

The  twentieth  century  shows  an  awakened  sense  of  civic 
responsibility,  and  yet  it  would  be  difficult  to  name  a  man 


BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN  79 

who  has  done  more  for  his  commonwealth  than  Franklin. 
He  started  the  first  subscription  library,  organized  the  first 
fire  department,  improved  the  postal  service,  helped  to 
pave  and  clean  the  streets,  invented  the  Franklin  stove, 
for  which  he  refused  to  take  out  a  patent,  took  decided 
steps  toward  improving  education  and  founding  the  Uni 
versity  of  Pennsylvania,  and  helped  establish  a  needed 
public  hospital.  The  Autobiography  shows  his  pleasure  at 
being  told  that  there  was  no  such  thing  as  carrying  through 
a  public-spirited  project  unless  he  was  concerned  in  it. 

His  electrical  discoveries,  especially  his  identification  of 
lightning  with  electricity,  gained  him  world-wide  fame. 
Harvard  and  Yale  gave  him  honorary  degrees.  England 
made  him  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  and  awarded  him 
the  Copley  Medal.  The  foremost  scientists  in  France  gave 
him  enthusiastic  praise. 

The  Autobiography,  ending  with  1757,  does  not  tell  how 
he  won  his  fame  as  a  statesman.  In  1764  he  went  to  Eng 
land  as  colonial  agent  to  protest  against  the  passage  of 
the  Stamp  Act.  All  but  two  and  one  half  of  the  next 
twenty  years  he  spent  abroad,  in  England  and  France. 
The  report  of  his  examination  in  the  English  House  of 
Commons,  relative  to  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  im 
pressed  both  Europe  and  America  with  his  wonderful  ca 
pacity.  Never  before  had  an  American  given  Europe 
such  an  exhibition  of  knowledge,  powers  of  argument, 
and  shrewdness,  tempered  with  tact  and  good  humor. 
In  1773  he  increased  his  reputation  as  a  writer  and  threw 
more  light  on  English  colonial  affairs  by  publishing,  in 
London,  Rules  for  Reducing  a  Great  Empire  to  a  Small 
One,  and  An  Edict  by  the  King  of  Prussia. 

In  1776,  at  the  age  of  seventy,  he  became  commissioner 
to  the  court  of  France,  where  he  remained  until  1785 


80  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

Every  student  of  American  history  knows  the  part  he 
played  there  in  popularizing  the  American  Revolution, 
until  France  aided  us  with  her  money  and  her  navy.  It 
is  doubtful  if  any  man  has  ever  been  more  popular  away 
from  home  than  Franklin  was  in  France.  The  French 
regarded  him  as  "the  personification  of  the  rights  of 
man."  They  followed  him  on  the  streets,  gave  him  almost 
frantic  applause  when  he  appeared  in  public,  put  his  por 
trait  in  nearly  every  house  and  on  almost  every  snuff  box, 
and  bought  a  Franklin  stove  for  their  houses. 

He  returned  to  Philadelphia  in  1785,  revere.d  by  his  coun 
try.  He  was  the  only  man  who  had  signed  four  of  the 
most  famous  documents  in  American  history  :  the  Declara 
tion  of  Independence,  the  treaty  of  alliance  with  France, 
the  treaty  of  peace  with  England  at  the  close  of  the  Revo 
lution,  and  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  He  had 
also  become,  as  he  remains  to-day,  America's  most  widely 
read  colonial  writer.  When  he  died  in  1790,  the  American 
Congress  and  the  National  Assembly  of  France  went  into 
mourning. 

General  Characteristics. —  As  an  author,  Franklin  is  best 
known  for  his  philosophy  of  the  practical  and  the  useful. 
Jonathan  Edwards  turned  his  attention  to  the  next  world ; 
Franklin,  to  this  world.  The  gulf  is  as  vast  between  these 
two  men  as  if  they  had  lived  on  different  planets.  To  the 
end  of  his  life,  Franklin's  energies  were  bent  toward  improv 
ing  the  conditions  of  this  mundane  existence.  He  advises 
honesty,  not  because  an  eternal  spiritual  law  commands  it, 
but  because  it  is  the  best  policy.  He  needs  to  be  supple 
mented  by  the  great  spiritual  teachers.  He  must  not  be 
despised  for  this  reason,  for  the  great  spiritual  forces  fail 
when  they  neglect  the  material  foundations  imposed  on 
mortals.  Franklin  was  as  necessary  as  Jonathan  Edwards. 


BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN 


8l 


Poor  Richard,  1 7  ft . 


A  N 


Almanack 

FoithcYearofChrifl 

i 


733 


Being  the  Firft  after  1  E  AP  YEAR: 

Amt  wa*e/  J?*-/  the  fnaiian  Veitt 

By  the  Account  of  the  -E  torn  Crnh 
By  the  Latin  Church,  when  O  <ni  Y 
By  rhe  Computation  of  #"  Mf 
By  t 


Franklin  knew  the  importance  of  those  foundation  habits, 
without  which  higher  morality  is  not  possible.  He  impressed 
on  men  the  necessity  of  being  regular,  temperate,  industri 
ous,  saving,  of  curbing  de 
sire,  and  of  avoiding  vice. 
The  very  foundations  of 
character  rest  on  regularity, 
on  good  habits  so  inflexibly 
formed  that  it  is  painful  to 
break  them.  Franklin's 
success  in  laying  these 
foundations  was  phenom 
enal.  His  Poor  Richard 's 
Almanac,  begun  in  1733, 
was  one  of  his  chief  agen 
cies  in  reaching  the  com 
mon  people.  They  read, 
reread,  and  acted  on  such 
proverbs  as  the  following, 
which  he  published  in  this 
Almanac  from  year  to 
year : — 

"  He  has  chang'd  his  one  ey'd 
horse  for  a  blind  one"  (1733). 1 

u  Three  may  keep  a  secret,  if 
two  of  them  are  dead "'  (1735). 

"Wealth  is  not  his  that  has  it, 
but  his  that  enjoys  it"  (1736). 

u  Fly  pleasures  and  they'll  follow  you"  (1738). 

"  Have  you  somewhat  to  do  to-morrow;  do  it  to-day"  (1742). 

"  Tart  words  make  no  friends  :  a  spoonful  of  honey  will  catch  more 
flies  than  a  gallon  of  vinegar"  (1744). 


Wherein 

u  £unfions»  Eclipfcs,  Ju'dg'mcnt  pf 
rhe  Weather,  Spring  Tu(c<,  Planef/Motion** 
nrnrual  Afpcav.  Sun  and  Moon',  Rifing  and  ^^ 
ring,  Length  of  Days,  Time  of  High  Wwr 
Fair*,  G>urr.i,  and  obfcmbJe  Day* 
Fitted  totheLarirudcol  Forfv  Decrees 
«nd  ,  Meridian  of  F,v,Ho,m  Wfft  f^Sw' 
but  may  without  fenfiHle  Error  ftrve  <li  rhe  Jd.' 

cvcn 


PHILADRLPHIA- 

Piinted  and  fold  by  B  F^NKLtN. 
Pnotiog  Office  near  jhe  M3,l 
~  The  Third  JiuprcITioa  ~~~ 

FACSIMILE  OF  TITLE-PAGE,  TO  "POOR 
RICHARD'S  ALMANAC"   FOR  1733 


The  figures  in  parenthesis  indicate  the  year  of  publication. 


g2  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

In  1757  Franklin  gathered  together  what  seemed  to  him 
the  most  striking  of  these  proverbs  and  published  them  as 
a  preface  to  the  Almanac  for  1758.  This  preface,  the 
most  widely  read  of  all  his  writings,  has  since  been  known 
as  The  Way  to  Wealth.  It  had  been  translated  into 
nearly  all  European  languages  before  the  end  of  the  nine 
teenth  century.  It  is  still  reprinted  in  whole  or  part  almost 
every  year  by  savings  banks  and  societies  in  France  and 
England,  as  well  as  in  the  United  States.  "  Dost  thou  love 
life? "  asks  Poor  Richard  in  The  Way  to  Wealth.  "Then," 
he  continues,  "do  not  squander  time,  for  that's  the  stuff 
life  is  made  of."  Franklin  modestly  disclaimed  much 
originality  in  the  selection  of  these  proverbs,  but  it  is  true 
that  he  made  many  of  them  more  definite,  incisive,  and  apt. 
to  lodge  in  the  memory.  He  has  influenced,  and  he  still 
continues  to  influence,  the  industry  and  thrift  of  untold 
numbers.  In  one  of  our  large  cities,  a  branch  library, 
frequented  by  the  humble  and  unlearned,  reports  that 
in  one  year  his  Autobiography  was  called  for  four  hun 
dred  times,  and  a  life  of  him,  containing  many  of  Poor 
Richard's  sayings,  was  asked  for  more  than  one  thousand 

times. 

He  is  the  first  American  writer  to  show  a  keen  sense  of 
humor.  There  may  be  traces  of  humor  in  The  Simple 
Cobbler  of  Agawam  (p.  41)  and  in  Cotton  Mather  (p.  46), 
but  Franklin  has  a  rich  vein.  He  used  this  with  fine  effect 
when  he  was  colonial  agent  in  England.  He  determined 
to  make  England  see  herself  from  the  American/ point  of 
view,  and  so  he  published  anonymously  in  a  newspaper  An 
Edict  of  the  King  of  Prussia.  This  Edict  proc  Aimed  that 
it  was  a  matter  of  common  knowledge  that  Britain  had 
been  settled  by  Hengist  and  Horsa  and  other  (German  col 
onists,  and  that,  in  consequence  of  this  fact,  the  King  of 


JOHN  WOOLMAN  83 

Prussia  had  the  right  to  regulate  the  commerce,  manu 
factures,  taxes,  and  laws  of  the  English.  Franklin  gave  in 
this  Edict  the  same  reasons  and  embodied  the  same  restric 
tions,  which  seemed  so  sensible  to  George  III.  and  the 
Torie.s.  Franklin  was  the  guest  of  an  English  Lord,  when 
a  man  burst  jnto  the  room  with  the  newspaper  containing 
the  Edict,  saying,  "  Here's  news  for  ye  !  Here's  the  King 
of  Prussia  claiming  a  right  to  this  kingdom  !  " 

In  writing  English  prose,  Franklin  was  fortunate  in 
receiving  instruction  from  Bunyan  and  Addison.  The 
pleasure  of  reading  Franklin's  Autobiography  is  increased 
by  his  simple,  easy,  natural  way  of  relating  events. 
Simplicity,  practicality,  suggestiveness,  common  sense, 
were  his  leading  attributes.  His  sense  of  humor  kept  him 
from  being  tiresome  and  made  him  realize  that  the  half 
may  be  greater  than  the  whole.  The  two  people  most  use- 
fui  to  the  age  in  which  they  lived  were  George  Washing 
ton  and  Benjamin  Franklin. 


JOHN   WOOLMAN,   1720-1772 

A  Great  Altruist.  —  This  Quaker  supplements  Franklin 
in  teaching  that  the  great  aim  in  life  should  be  to  grow 
more  capable  of  seeing  those  spiritual  realities  which  were 
before  invisible.  Life's  most  beautiful  realities  can  never 
be  seen  with  the  physical  eye.  Thefournat  of  John  Wool- 
man  will  help  one  to  increase  his  range  of  vision  for  what 
is  best  worth  seeing.  It  will  broaden  the  reader's  sympa 
thies  and  develop  a  keener  sense  of  responsibility  for  les 
sening  the  misery  of  the  world  and  for  protecting  even  the 
sparrow  from  falling.  It  will  cultivate  precisely  that  side 
of  human  nature  which  stands  most  in  need  of  develop 
ment,  To  emphasize  these  points,  Charles  Lamb  said, 


84  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

"  Get  the  writings  of  John  Woolman  by  heart,"  and  Whit 
tier  wrote  of  Woolman's/0«r//<2/,  which  he  edited  and  made 
easily  accessible,  "  I  have  been  awed  and  solemnized  by  the 
presence  of  a  serene  and  beautiful  spirit  redeemed  of  the 
Lord  from  all  selfishness,  and  I  have  been  made  thankful 
for  the  ability  to  recognize  and  the  disposition  to  love  him." 

John  Woolman  was  born  of  Quaker  parentage  in  North- . 
ampton,  New  Jersey.  He  never  received  much  education. 
Early  in  life  he  became  a  shopkeeper's  clerk  and  then  a 
tailor.  This  lack  of  early  training  and  broad  experience 
affects  his  writings,  which  are  not  remarkable  for  ease  of 
expression  or  for  imaginative  reach;  but  their  moral  beauty 
and  intensity  more  than  counterbalance  such  deficiencies. 

A  part  of  his  time  he  spent  traveling  as  an  itinerant 
preacher.  He  tried  to  get  Quakers  to  give  up  their  slaves, 
and  he  refused  to  write  wills  that  bequeathed  slaves.  He 
pleaded  for  compassion  for  overworked  oxen  and  horses. 
He  journeyed  among  the  Indians,  and  endeavored  to  im 
prove  their  condition.  It  cut  him  to  the  quick  to  see 
traders  try  to  intoxicate  them  so  as  to  get  their  skins  and  furs 
for  almost  nothing.  He  took  passage  for  England  in  the 
steerage,  and  learned  the  troubles  of  the  sailors.  From 
this  voyage  he  never  returned,  but  died  in  York  in  1772. 

In  the  year  of  his  death,  he  made  in  his  Journal  the 
following  entry,  which  is  typical  of  his  gentle,  loving  spirit: 

"  So  great  is  the  hurry  in  the  spirit  of  this  world,  that  in  aiming  to  do 
business  quickly  and  to  gain  wealth,  the  creation  at  this  day  doth  loudly 
groan." 

When  a  former  president  of  Harvard  issued  a  list  of 
books  for  actual  reading,  he  put  Franklin's  Autobiography 
first  and  John  Woolman'sy<??/r«^/  second.  Franklin  looked 
steadily  at  this  world,  Woolman  at  the  next.  Each  record 
is  supplementary  to  the  other. 


EARLY  AMERICAN   FICTION  85 

EARLY  AMERICAN   FICTION 

The  First  Attempts.  —  Mrs.  Sarah  Morton  published  in 
Boston  in  1789  a  novel  entitled  The  Power  of  Sympathy. 
This  is  probably  the  first  American  novel  to  appear  in 
print.  The  reason  for  such  a  late  appearance  of  native 
fiction  may  be  ascribed  to  the  religious  character  of  the 
early  colonists  and  to  the  ascendency  of  the  clergy,  who 
would  not  have  tolerated  novel  reading  by  members  of 
their  flocks.  Jonathan  Edwards  complained  that  some 
of  his  congregation  were  reading  forbidden  books,  and  he 
gave  from  the  pulpit  the  names  of  the  guilty  parties. 
These  books  were  probably  English  novels.  Sir  Leslie 
Stephen  thinks  that  Richardson's  Pamela  (1740)  may  have 
been  one  of  the  books  under  the  ban.  There  is  little 
doubt  that  a  Puritan  church  member  would  have  been  dis 
ciplined  if  he  had  been  known  to  be  a  reader  of  some  of 
Fielding's  works,  like  Joseph  Andrews  (1742).  The  Puri 
tan  clergy,  even  at  a  later  period,  would  not  sanction  the 
reading  of  novels  unless  they  were  of  the  dry,  vapid 
type,  like  the  earliest  Sunday  school  books.  Jonathan 
Edwards  wrote  the  story  of  one  of  his  youthful  experiences, 
but  it  was  "the  story  of  a  spiritual  experience  so  little  in 
volved  with  the  earth,  that  one  might  fancy  it  the  story  of 
a  soul  that  had  missed  being  born." 

Timothy  Dwight  (p.  92),  who  became  president  of  Yale 
in  1795,  said  that  there  is  a  great  gulf  fixed  between 
novels  and  the  Bible.  Even  later  than  1800  there  was 
a  widespread  feeling  that  the  reading  of  novels  imperiled 
the  salvation  of  the  soul.  To-day  we  know  that  certain 
novels  are  as  dangerous  to  the  soul  as  leprosy  to  the  body, 
but  we  have  become  more  discriminating.  We  have  learned 
that  the  right  type  of  fiction,  read  in  moderation,  cultivates 


86  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

the  imagination,  broadens  the  sympathetic  powers,  and 
opens  up  a  new,  interesting,  and  easily  accessible  land  of 
enjoyment. 

A  quarter  of  a  century  before  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence,  the  great  eighteenth-century  English  writers  of 
fiction  had  given  a  new  creation  to  the  literature  of  Eng 
land.  Samuel  Richardson  (1689- 1761)  had  published  Pam 
ela  in  1740  and  Clarissa  Harlowe  in  1748.  Henry 
Fielding  (1707-1754)  had  given  his  immortal  Tom  Jones  \& 
the  world  in  1749. 

Mrs.  Morton's  Power  of  Sympathy,  a  novel  written  with 
a  moral  purpose,  is  a  poorly  constructed  story  of  characters 
whom  we  fortunately  do  not  meet  outside  of  books.  One 
of  these  characters,  looking  at  some  flowers  embroidered  by 
the  absent  object  of  his  affections,  says,  "  It  shall  yield  more 
fragrance  to  my  soul  than  all  the  bouquets  in  the  universe." 

The  majority  of  the  early  novels,  in  aiming  to  teach 
some  lesson,  show  the  influence  of  Samuel  Richardson,  the 
father  of  English  fiction.  This  didactic  spirit  appears  in 
sober  statement  of  the  most  self-evident  truths.  "  Death, 
my  dear  Maria,  is  a  serious  event,"  says  the  heroine  of  one 
of  these  novels.  Another  characteristic  is  tepid  or  exagger 
ated  sentimentality. .  The  heroine  of  The  Power  of  Sympathy 
dies  of  a  broken  heart  "  in  a  lingering  graceful  manner." 

At  least  twenty-two  American  novels  had  been  published 
between  1789  and  the  appearance  of  Charles  Brockden 
Brc/.vn's  Wielandm  1798.  Only  an  antiquary  need  linger 
over  ti>ese.  We  must  next  study  the  causes  that  led  to 
a  pronounced  change  in  fiction. 

Difference  between  the  Classic  and  the  Romantic  School.  — 
The  next  step  in  fiction  will  show  a  breaking  away  from 
the  classic  or  didactic  school  of  Samuel  Richardson  and  a 
turning  toward  the  new  Gothic  or  romantic  school.  To 


EARLY  AMERICAN  FICTION  87 

understand  these  terms,  we  must  know  something  of  the 
English  influences  that  led  to  this  change. 

For  the  first  two  thirds  of  the  eighteenth  century,  English 
literature  shows  the  dominating  influence  of  the  classic 
school.  Alexander  Pope  ( 1688-1 744)  in  poetry  and  Samuel 
Johnson  (1709-1784)  in  prose  were  the  most  influential  of 
this  school.  They  are  called  classicists  because  they  looked 
to  the  old  classic  authors  for  their  guiding  rules.  Horace, 
more  than  any  other  classic  writer,  set  the  standard  for 
poetry.  Pope  and  his  followers  cared  more  for  the  excel 
lence  of  form  than  for  the  worth  of  the  thought.  Their  key 
note  was  :  — 

"  True  Wit  is  Nature  to  advantage  dress'd, 
What  oft  was  thought,  but  ne'er  so  well  express'd."  1 

In  poetry  the  favorite  form  was  a  couplet,  that  is,  two  lines 
which  rhymed  and  usually  made  complete  sense.  This 
was  not  inaptly  termed  "  rocking  horse  meter."  The 
prose  writers  loved  the  balanced  antithetical  sentences  used 
by  Dr.  Johnson  in  his  comparison  of  Pope  and  Dryden  :  — 

"  If  the  flights  of  Dryden,  therefore,  are  higher,  Pope  continues  longer 
on  the  wing.  .  .  .  Dryden  is  read  with  frequent  astonishment  and 
Pope  with  perpetual  delight." 

Such  overemphasis  placed  on  mere  form  tended  to  draw 
the  attention  of  the  writer  away  from  the  matter.  The 
American  poetry  of  this  period  suffered  more  than  the 
prose  from  this  formal  influence. 

Since  the  motto  of  the  classicists  was  polished  regularity, 
they  avoided  the  romantic,  irregular,  and  improbable,  and 
condemned  the  Arabian  Nights,  A  Midsummer  Nighfs 
Dream,  The  Tempest,  and  other  "  monstrous  irregularities 
of  Shakespeare."  This  school  loved  to  teach  and  to  point 

1  Pope's  Essay  on  Criticism*  lines  297-8. 


88  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

out  shortcomings,  hence  the  terms  "  didactic"  and  "  satiric  " 
are  often  applied  to  it. 

The  last  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  showed  a  revolt 
against  the  classicists.  Victory  came  to  the  new  romantic 
school,  which  included  authors  like  Wordsworth(  1 770-1 850), 
Coleridge  (1772-1834),  Shelley  (1792-1822),  and  Keats 
(1795-1821).  The  terms  "  romantic "  and  "imaginative" 
were  at  first  in  great  measure  synonymous.  The  roman 
ticists  maintained ,  that  a  reality  of  the  imagination  might 
be  as  satisfying  and  as  important  as  a  reality  of  the  prosaic 
reason,  since  the  human  mind  had  the  power  of  imagining 
as  well  as  of  thinking. 

The  term  "  Gothic  "  was  first  applied  to  fiction  by  Horace 
Walpole(i7i7~i797),  who  gave  to  his  famous  romance  the 
title  of  The  Castle  of  Otranto  :  A  Gothic  Romance"  (1764). 
"Gothic"  is  here  used  in  the  same  sense  as  "romantic." 
Gothic  architecture  seemed  highly  imaginative  and  over 
wrought  in  comparison  with  the  severe  classic  order.  In 
attempting  to  avoid  the  old  classic  monotony,  the  Gothic 
school  of  fiction  was  soon  noted  for  its  lavish  use  of  the 
unusual,  the  mysterious,  and  the  terrible.  Improbability,  or 
the  necessity  for  calling  in  the  supernatural  to  untie  some 
knot,  did  not  seriously  disturb  this  school.  The  standard 
definition  of  "  Gothic  "  in  fiction  soon  came  to  include  an 
element  of  strangeness  added  to  terror.  When  the  taste 
for  the  extreme  Gothic  declined,  there  ensued  a  period  of 
modified  romanticism,  which  demanded  the  unusual  and 
occasionally  the  impossible.  This  influence  persisted  in 
the  fiction  of  the  greatest  writers,  until  the  coming  of  the 
realistic  school  (p.  367).  We  are  now  better  prepared  to 
understand  the  work  of  Charles  Brockden  Brown,  the  first 
great  American  writer  of  romance,  and  to  pass  from  him 
to  Cooper,  Hawthorne,  and  Poe. 


CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN 


89 


CHARLES   BROCKDEN    BROWN,  1771-1810 

Philadelphia  has  the  honor  of  being  the  birthplace  of 
Brown,  who  was  the  first  professional  man  of  letters  in 
America.  Franklin  is  a  more  famous  writer  than  Brown, 
but,  unlike  Brown,  he  did  not  make  literature  the  business 
of  his  life.  Descended  from  ancestors  who  came  over  on 
the  ship  with  William  Penn,  Brown  at  the  age  of  ten  had 
read,  with  Quaker  seriousness,  every  book  that  he  could 
find.  He  did  not  go  to  college,  but  studied  law,  which  he 
soon  gave  up  for  literature  as  a  profession. 

Depression  from  ill  health  and  the  consciousness  that 


,pO  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

)he  would  probably  die  young  colored  all  his  romances.  He 
has  the  hero  of  one  of  his  tales  say,  "  We  are  exposed,  in 
common  with  the  rest  of  mankind,  to  innumerable  casual 
ties  ;  but,  if  these  be  shunned,  we  are  unalterably  fated  to 
die  of  consumption."  In  1810,  before  he  had  reached  forty, 
he  fell  a  victim  to  that  disease.  Near  the  end  of  his  days, 
he  told  his  wife  that  he  had  not  known  what  health  was 
longer  than  a  half  hour  at  a  time. 

Brown  deserves  a  place  in  the  history  of  American  lit 
erature  for  his  four  romances :  Wieland;  Ormond,  Arthur 
Mervyn,  and  Edgar  Pluntly.  These  were  all  published 
within  the  space  of  three  years  from  1798,  the  date  of  the 
publication  of  Wieland.  These  romances  show  a  striking 
change  from  the  American  fiction  which  had  preceded 
them.  They  are  no  longer  didactic  and  sentimental,  but 
Gothic  or  romantic.  Working  under  English  influence, 
Brown  gave  to  America  her  first  great  Gothic  romances. 
The  English  romance  which  influenced  him  the  most  was 
Caleb  Williams  (1794),  the  work  of  William  Godwin 
(1756-1836),  the  father-in-law  of  the  poet  Shelley. 

Wieland  is  considered  the  strongest  of  Brown's  Gothic 
romances,  but  it  does  not  use  as  distinctively  American 
materials  as  his  three  other  stories  of  this  type,  Ormond, 
Arthur  Mervyn,  or  Memoirs  of  the  Year  1793,  and  Edgar 
Huntly.  The  results  of  his  own  experience  with  the  yellow 
fever  plague  in  Philadelphia  give  an  American  touch  to 
Ormond  and  Arthur  Mervyn,  and  at  the  same  time  add  the 
Gothic  element  of  weirdness  and  horror.  Arthur  Mervyn 
is  far  the  better  of  the  two. 

Edgar  Huntly,  0r  Memoirs  of  a  Sleep  Walker,  shows  a 
Gothic  characteristic  in  its  very  title.  This  book  is  note 
worthy  in  the  evolution  of  American  fiction,  not  because 
of  the  strange  actions  of  the  sleep  walker,  but  for  the  rea- 


CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN  91 

son  that  Brown  here  deliberately  determines,  as  he  states 
in  his  prefatory  note  To  the  Public,  to  give  the  romance  an 
American  flavor,  by  using  "  the  incidents  of  Indian  hos 
tility  and  the  perils  of  the  Western  wilderness."  If  we 
assume  that  John  Smith's  story  of  Pocahontas  is  not  fiction, 
then  to  Brown  belongs  the  honor  of  first  recognizing  in  the 
Indian  a  valuable  literary  asset  from  the  Gothic  romancer's 
point  of  view.  In  Chapter  XVI.,  he  reverses  Captain 
Smith's  story  and  has  Edgar  Huntly  rescue  a  young  girl 
from  torture  and  kill  an  Indian.  In  the  next  two  chapters, 
the  hero  kills  four  Indians.  The  English  recognized  this 
introduction  of  a  new  element  of  strangeness  added  to  terror 
and  gave  Brown  the  credit  of  developing  an  "  Americanized" 
Gothic.  He  disclosed  to  future  writers  of  fiction,  like 
James  Fenimore  Cooper  (p.  125),  a  new  mine  of  American 
materials.  This  romance  has  a  second  distinguishing  char 
acteristic,  for  Brown  surpassed  contemporary  British 
novelists  in  taking  his  readers  'into  the  open  air,  which 
forms  the  stage  setting  for  the  adventures  of  Edgar 
Huntly.  The  hero  of  that  story  loves  to  observe  the  birds, 
the  squirrels,  and  the  old  Indian  woman  "plucking  the 
weeds  from  among  her  corn,  bruising  the  grain  between 
two  stones,  and  setting  her  snares  for  rabbits  and  opos 
sums."  He  takes  us  where  we  can  feel  the  exhilaration 
from  "a  wild  heath,  whistled  over  by  October  blasts 
meagerly  adorned  with  the  dry  stalks  of  scented  shrubs 
and  the  bald  heads  of  the  sapless  mullein." 

Brown's  place  in  the  history  of  fiction  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  he  introduced  the  Gothic  romance  to  American  litera 
ture.  He  loved  to  subject  the  weird,  the  morbid,  the 
terrible,  to  a  psychological  analysis.  In  this  respect  he 
suggests  Hawthorne,  although  there  are  more  points  of 
difference  than  of  likeness  between  him  and  the  great  New 


92  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

England  romancer.  In  weird  subject  matter,  but  not  in 
artistic  ability,  he  reminds  us  of  Poe.  Brown  could  devise 
striking  incidents,  but  he  lacked  the  power  to  weave  them 
together  in  a  well-constructed  plot.  He  sometimes  forgot 
that  important  incidents  needed  further  elaboration  or  refer 
ence,  and  he  occasionally  left  them  suspended  in  mid-air. 
His  lack  of  humor  was  too  often  responsible  for  his  impos 
ing  too  much  analysis  and  explanation  on  his  readers. 
Although  he  did  not  hesitate  to  use  the  marvelous  in  his 
plots,  his  realistic  mind  frequently  impelled  him  to  try  to 
explain  the  wonderful  occurrences.  He  thus  attempted  to 
bring  in  ventriloquism  to  account  for  the  mysterious  voices 
which  drove  Wieland  to  kill  his  wife  and  children. 

It  is,  however,  not  difficult  for  a  modern  reader  to  be 
come  so  much  interested  in  the  first  volume  of  Arthur 
Mervyn  as  to  be  unwilling  to  leave  it  unfinished.  Brown 
will  probably  be  longest  remembered  for  his  strong  pictures 
of  the  yellow  fever  epidemic  in  Philadelphia,  his  use  of 
the  Indian  in  romance,  and  his  introduction  of  the  out 
door  world  of  the  wilderness  and  the  forest. 


POETRY- THE  HARTFORD  WITS 

The  Americans  were  slow  to  learn  that  political  independ 
ence  could  be  far  more  quickly  gained  than  literary 
indeperidence.  A  group  of  poets,  sometimes  known  as  the 
Hartford  Wits,  determined  to  take  the  kingdom  of  poetry 
by  violence.  The  chief  of  these  were  three  Yale  graduates, 
Timothy  Dwight,  Joel  Barlow,  and  John  Trumbull. 

Timothy  Dwight  (1752-1817).  —  Before  he  became 
president  of  Yale,  Dwight  determined  to  immortalize 
himself  by  an  epic  poem.  He  accordingly  wrote  the 
Conquest  of  Canaan  in  9671  lines,  beginning:  — 


POETRY 


93 


"The  Chief,  whose  arms  to  Israel's  chosen  band 
Gave  the  fair  empire  of  the  promised  land, 
Ordain'd  by  Heaven  to  hold  the  sacred  sway, 
Demands  my  voice,  and  animates  the  lay." 

This  poem  is  written  in  the  rocking  horse  couplets  of 
Pope,  and  it  is  well-nigh  unreadable  to-day.  It  is  doubtful 
if  twenty-five  people  in  our 
times  have  ever  read  it 
through.  Even  where  the 
author  essays  fine  writing, 
as  in  the  lines:  — 

"  On   spicy  shores,    where  beau 
teous  morning  reigns, 
Or  Evening,  lingers  o'er  her  fa 
vorite  plains," 

there  is  nothing  to  awaken  a 
single  definite  image,  noth 
ing  but  glittering  general 
ities.  Dwight's  best  known 
poetry  is  found  in  his  song, 
Columbia,  composed  while 
he  was  a  chaplain  in  the 
Revolutionary  War :  — 


TIMOTHY   DWIGHT 


"  Columbia,  Columbia,  to  glory  arise, 
The  queen  of  the  world,  and  the  child  of  the  skies.1' 

Joel  Barlow  (1755-1812)  was,  like  Dwight,  a  chaplain  in 
the  war,  but  he  became  later  a  financier  and  diplomat,  as 
well  as  a  poet.  He  determined  in  The  Vision  of  Columbus 
(1787),  afterwards  expanded  into  the  ponderous  Columbiad, 
to  surpass  Homer  and  all  preceding  epics.  Barlow's  clas 
sical  couplets  thus  present  a  general  in  the  Revolution, 
ordering  a  cannonade  :  — 


94  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

"  When  at  his  word  the  carbon  cloud  shall  rise, 
And  well-ainVd  thunders  rock  the  shores  and  skies.1' 

Hawthorne   ironically    suggested    that    the    Columbiad 
should   be  dramatized  and   set  to  the  accompaniment  of 

cannon  and  thunder  and 
lightning.  Barlow,  like 
many  others,  certainly 
did  not  understand  that 
bigness  is  not  neces 
sarily  greatness.  He  is 
best  known  by  some 
lines  from  his  less  am 
bitious  Hasty  Pud 
ding  :- 

"  E'en  in  thy  native  regions, 

how  I  blush 

To  hear  the  Pennsylvanians 
callthee 


John  Trumbull(i75o- 
1831).  —  The  greatest  of 
the  Hartford  wits  was 

John  Trumbull.  "His  father,  a  Congregational  clergy 
man  living  at  Waterbury,  Connecticut,  prepared  boys  for 
college.  In  1757  he  sent  two  candidates  to  Yale  to  be 
examined,  one  pupil  of  nineteen,  the  other  of  seven.  Com 
menting  on  this,  the  Connecticut  Gazette  of  September  24, 
1757,  says,  "  the  Son  of  Rev'd.  Mr.  Trumble  of  Waterbury 
.  .  .  passed  a  good  Examination,  altho  but  little  more  than 
seven  years  of  age  ;  but  on  account  of  his  Youth  his  father 
does  not  intend  he  shall  at  present  continue  at  College." 
This  boy  waited  until  he  was  thirteen  to  enter  Yale,  where 
he  graduated  in  due  course.  After  teaching  for  two  years 
in  that  college,  he  became  a  lawyer  by  profession.  Although 


POETRY 


95 


he  did  not  die  until  1831,  the  literary  work  by  which  he  is 
known  was  finished  early. 

Trumbull  occupied  the  front  rank  of  the  satiric  writers 
of  that  age.  Early  in  his  twenties  he  satirized  in  classi 
cal  couplets  the  education  of  the  day,  telling  how  the 
students  :  — 

"  Read  ancient  authors  o'er  in  vain, 
Nor  taste  one  beauty  they  contain, 
And  plodding  on  in  one  dull  tone, 
Gain  ancient  tongues  and  lose  their  own." 

His  masterpiece  was  a  satire  on  /British 


He  called  this  poem  M'Fingal,  after  a 
Scotch  Tory.     The  first  part  was  pub 
lished  in  1775  and  it  gave  a  power 
ful  impetus  to  the  Continental  cause. 
It  has  been  said  that  the  poem  "  is 
to  be  considered  as  one  of  the  forces 
of   the   Revolution,  because   as   a 
satire  on  the  Tories  it  penetrated 
into  every  farmhouse,  and  sent 
the   rustic   volunteers    laughing 
into  the  ranks  of  Washington  and 
Greene." 

One  cannot  help  thinking  of 
Butler's  Hudibras  (1663),  when 
reading  M'Fingal.  Of  course 

the  satiric  aim  is  different  in  the  two  poems.  Butler  ridi 
culed  the  Puritans  and  upheld  the  Royalists,  while-  Trum 
bull  discharged  his  venomed  shafts  at  the  adherents  of  the 
king.  InM'Fingal,  a  Tory  bent  on  destroying  a  liberty 
pole  drew  his  sword  on  a  Whig,  who  had  no  arms  except 
a  spade.  The  Whig,  however,  employed  his  weapon  with 
such  good  effect  on  the  Tory  that  :  — 


JOHN  TRUMBULL 


C>6  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

"  His  bent  knee  faiPd,  and  void  of  strength, 
Stretch'd  on  the  ground  his  manly  length. 
Like  ancient  oak,  o'erturn'd,  he  lay, 
Or  tower  to  tempests  falPn  a  prey, 
Or  mountain  sunk  with  all  his  pines, 
Or  flow'r  the  plough  to  dust  consigns, 
And  more  things  else  —  but  all  men  know  'em, 
If  slightly  versed  in  epic  poem." 

Some  of  the  incisive  lines  from  M' Fingal  have  been 
wrongly  ascribed  to  Butler's  Hudibras.  The  following  are 
instances  :  — 

"  No  man  e'er  felt  the  halter  draw 
With  good  opinion  of  the  law." 

"  For  any  man  with  half  an  eye 
What  stands  before  him  may  espy ; 
But  optics  sharp  it  needs,  I  ween, 
To  see  what  is  not  to  be  seen." 

Trumbull's  M '  Fingal  is  a  worthy  predecessor  of  Lowell's 
Biglow  Papers.  Trumbull  wrote  his  poem  as  a  "  weapon 
of  warfare."  The  first  part  of  M' Fingal  passed  through 
some  forty  editions,  many  of  them  printed  without  the 
author's  consent.  This  fact  is  said  to  have  led  Connecti 
cut  to  pass  a  copyright  law  in  1783,  and  to  have  thus  con 
stituted  a  landmark  in  American  literary  history. 

PHILIP  FRENEAU,  1752-1832 

New  York  City  was  the  birthplace  of  Freneau,  the 
greatest  poet  born  in  America  before  the  Revolutionary 
War.  He  graduated  at  Princeton  in  1771,  and  became  a 
school  teacher,  sea  captain,  poet,  and  editor. 

The  Revolution  broke  out  when  he  was  a  young  man, 
and  he  was  moved  to  write  satiric  poetry  against  the  British. 
Tyler  says  that  "a  running  commentary  on  his  Revolu- 


PHILIP  FRENEAU  97 

tionary  satires  would  be  an  almost  complete  commentary 
on  the  whole  Revolutionary  struggle ;  nearly  every  im 
portant  emergency  and  phase  of  which  are  photographed 
in  his  keen,  merciless,  and  often  brilliant 
lines."  In  one  of  these  satires  Freneau 
represents  Jove  investigating  the 
records  of  Fate:  — 

"  And  first  on  the  top  of  a  column  he 

read  — 
Of  a  king  with  a  mighty  soft  place  in 

his  head, 
Who  should  join  in  his  temper  the  ass 

and  the  mule, 
The  Third  of  his  name  and  by  far  the  '    7 

PHILIP   FRENEAU 

We  can  imagine  the  patriotic  colonists  singing  as  a 
refrain :  — 

"  .     .     .     said  Jove  with  a  smile, 
Columbia  shall  never  be  ruled  by  an  isle," 

or  this :  — 

6'  The  face  of  the  Lion  shall  then  become  pale, 
He  shall  yield  fifteen  teeth  and  be  sheared  of  his  tail,1' 

but  Freneau's  satiric  verse  is  not  his  best,  however  impor 
tant  it  may  be  to  historians. 

His  best  poems  are  a  few  short  lyrics,  remarkable  for 
their  simplicity,  sincerity,  and  love  of  nature.     His  lines :  — 

"A  hermit's  house  beside  a  stream 
With  forests  planted  round," 

are  suggestive  of  the  romantic  school  of  Wordsworth  and 
Coleridge,  as  is  also  The  Wild  Honeysuckle,  which  begins 
as  follows :  — 


p3  THE  EMERGENCE   OF   A  NATION 

«  Fair  flower,  that  dost  so  comely  grow, 

Hid  in  this  silent,  dull  retreat, 
Untouched  thy  honied  blossoms  blow, 
Unseen  thy  little  branches  greet. 

"  By  Nature's  self  in  white  arrayed, 

She  bade  thee  shun  the  vulgar  eye, 
And  planted  here  the  guardian  shade, 
And  sent  soft  waters  murmuring  by." 

Although  Freneau's  best  poems  are  few  and  short,  no 
preceding  American  poet  had  equaled  them.  The  follow 
ing  will  repay  careful  reading :  The  Wild  Honeysuckle, 
The  Indian  Burying  Ground,  and  To  a  Honey  Bee. 

He  died  in  1832,  and  was  buried  near  his  home  at  Mount 
Pleasant,  Monmouth  County,  New  Jersey. 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE   OF   THE   PERIOD 

The  great  prose  representatives  of  the  first  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  Swift,  Addison,  Steele,  and  Defoe, 
had  passed  away  before  the  middle  of  the  century.  The 
creators  of  the  novel,  Samuel  Richardson  and  Henry 
Fielding,  had  done  their  best  work  by  1750. 

The  prose  writers  of  the  last  half  of  the  century  were 
Oliver  Goldsmith  (1728-1774),  who  published  the  Vicar 
of  Wakefield  in  1766;  Edward  Gibbon  (i  737-1 794),  who 
wrote  The  History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire;  Edmund  Burke  (1729-1797),  best  known  to-day 
for  his  Speech  on  Conciliation  with  America ;  and  Samuel 
Johnson  (1709-1784),  whose  Lives  of  the  Poets  is  the  best 
specimen  of  eighteenth-century  classical  criticism. 

The  most  noteworthy  achievement  of  the  century  was 
the  victory  of  romanticism  (p.  88)  over  classicism.  Pope's 
polished  satiric  and  didactic  verse,  neglecting  the  primrose 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE  OF  THE  PERIOD  99 

by  the  river's  brim,  lacking  deep  feeling,  high  ideals,  and 
heaven-climbing  imagination,  had  long  been  the  model 
that  inspired  cold  intellectual  poetry.  In  the  latter  part 
of  the  century,  romantic  feeling  and  imagination  won  their 
battle  and  came  into  their  own  heritage  in  literature. 
Robert  Burns  (1/59-1796)  wrote  poetry  that  touched  the 
heart.  A  classicist  like  Dr.  Johnson  preferred  the  town 
to  the  most  beautiful  country  scenes,  but  William  Cowper 
( 1 73  i-i  800)  says :  — 

"God  made  the  country,  and  man  made  the  town." 
Romantic  poetry  culminated  in  the  work  of  William 
Wordsworth  and  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  whose  Lyrical 
Ballads  (1798)  included  the  wonderful  romantic  poem  of 
The  Ancient  Mariner,  and  poems  by  Wordsworth,  which 
brought  to  thousands  of  human  souls  a  new  sense  of  com 
panionship  with  nature,  a  new  feeling 

" .     .     .    that  every  flower 
Enjoys  the  air  it  breathes," 

and  that  all  nature  is  anxious  to  share  its  joy  with  man  and 
to  introduce  him  to  a  new  world.  The  American  poets  of 
this  age,  save  Freneau  in  a  few  short  lyrics,  felt  but  little 
of  this  great  impulse ;  but  in  the  next  period  we  shall  see 
that  William  Cullen  Bryant  heard  the  call  and  sang  :  — 

"  Scarce  less  the  cleft-born  wild-flower  seems  to  enjoy 
Existence  than  the  winged  plunderer 
That  sucks  its  sweets." 

The  romantic  prose  was  not  of  as  high  an  order  as  the 
poetry.  Writers  of  romances  like  Walpole's  Castle  of 
Otranto  and  Godwin's  Caleb  Williams  did  not  allow  their 
imaginations  to  be  fettered  by  either  the  probable  or  the 
possible.  In  America  the  romances  of  Charles  Brockden 
Brown  show  the  direct  influence  of  this  school. 


100  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

LEADING   HISTORICAL  FACTS 

The  French  and  Indian  War  accomplished  two  great 
results.  In  the  first  place,  it  made  the  Anglo-Saxon  race 
dominant  in  North  America.  Had  the  French  won,  this 
book  would  have  been  chiefly  a  history  of  French  litera 
ture.  In  the  second  place,  the  isolated  colonies  learned  to 
know  one  another  and  their  combined  strength. 

Soon  after  the  conclusion  of  this  war,  the  English  began 
active  interference  with  colonial  imports  and  exports,  laid 
taxes  on  certain  commodities,  passed  the  Stamp  Act,  and 
endeavored  to  make  the  colonists  feel  that  they  were  hence 
forth  to  be  governed  in  fact  as  well  as  in  name  by  England. 
The  most  independent  men  that  the  world  has  ever  pn> 
duced  came  to  America  to  escape  tyranny  at  home.  The 
descendants  of  these  men  started  the  American  Revolution, 
signed  the  Declaration  of  Independence  in  1776,  and,  led 
by  George  Washington  (1732-1799),  one  of  the  greatest 
heroes  of  the  ages,  won  their  independence.  They  had  the 
assistance  of  the  French,  and  it  was  natural  that  the  treaty 
of  peace  with  England  should  be  signed  at  Paris  in  1783. 

Then  followed  a  period  nearly  as  trying  as  that  of  the  Rev 
olution,  an  era  called  by  John  Fiske  "  The  Critical  Period  of 
American  History,  1783-1789."  Because  of  the  jealousy 
of  the  separate  states  and  the  fear  that  tyranny  at  home 
might  threaten  liberty,  there  was  no  central  government 
vested  with  adequate  power.  Sometimes  there  was  a  con 
dition  closely  bordering  on  anarchy.  The  wisest  men 
feared  that  the  independence  so  dearly  bought  would  be 
lost.  Finally,  the  separate  states  adopted  a  Constitution 
which  united  them,  and  in  1789  they  chose  Washington  as 
the  president  of  this  Union.  His  Farewell  Address,  issued 
to  the  American  people  toward  the  end  of  his  administra- 


LEADING  HISTORICAL  FACTS  >ci. 

tion,  breathes  the  prayer  "  that  your  union  and  brotherly 
affection  may  be  perpetual ;  that  the  free  constitution 
which  is  the  work  of  your  hands,  may  be  sacredly  main 
tained  ;  that  its  administration  in  every  part  may  be 
stamped  with  wisdom  and  virtue."  A  leading  thought 
from  this  great  Address  shows  that  the  Virginian  agreed 
with  the  New  Englander  in  regard  to  the  chief  corner 
stone  of  this  Republic  :  — 

"  Of  all  the  dispositions  and  habits  which  lead  to  political  pros 
perity,  Religion  and  Morality  are  indispensable  supports." 

The  student  of  political  rather  than  of  literary  history  is 
interested  in  the  administrations  of  John  Adams  (1797- 
1801),  Thomas  Jefferson  (1801-1809),  and  James  Madison 
(1809-1817).  The  acquisition  in  1803  of  the  vast  central 
territory,  known  as  the  Louisiana  Purchase,  affected  the 
entire  subsequent  development  of  the  country  and  its 
literature.  Thomas  Jefferson  still  exerts  an  influence  on 
our  literature  and  institutions;  for  he  championed  the 
democratic,  as  opposed  to  the  aristocratic,  principle  of 
government.  His  belief  in  the  capacity  of  the  common 
people  for  progress  and  self-government  still  helps  to  mold 
public  opinion. 

Next  in  importance  to  the  victorious  struggle  of  the 
Revolution  and  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  is  the 
wonderful  pioneer  movement  toward  the  West.  Francis 
A.  Walker,  in  his  Making  of  the  Nation,  1783-1817,  says  :  — 

"  During  the  period  of  thirty-four  years  covered  by  this  narrative,  a 
movement  had  been  in  continuous  progress  for  the  westward  extension 
of  population,  which  far  transcended  the  limits  of  any  of  the  great  migra 
tions  of  mankind  upon  the  older  continents.  .  .  .  From  1790  to  1800, 
the  mean  population  of  the  period  being  about  four  and  a  half  millions, 
sixty-five  thousand  square  miles  were  brought  within  the  limits  of 
settlement ;  crossed  with  rude  roads  and  bridges  ;  built  up  with  rude 
houses  and  barns  ;  much  of  it,  also,  cleared  of  primeval  forests. 


102*  Tfe  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

"  In  the  next  ten  years,  the  mean  population  of  the  decade  being 
about  six  and  a  half  millions,  the  people  of  the  United  States  extended 
settlement  over  one  hundred  and  two  thousand  square  miles  of  abso 
lutely  new  territory.  .  .  .  No  other  people  could  have  done  this.  No: 
nor  the  half  of  it.  Any  other  of  the  great  migratory  races  —  Tartar, 
Slav,  or  German  —  would  have  broken  hopelessly  down  in  an  effort  to 
compass  such  a  field  in  such  a  term  of  years." 


SUMMARY 

The  early  essays  of  the  period,  Paine's  Common  Sense  and 
the  Crisis,  Jefferson's  Declaration  of  Independence,  Hamil 
ton's  pamphlets  and  papers,  all  champion  human  liberty 
and  show  the  influence  of  the  Revolution.  The  orators, 
James  Otis,  Patrick  Henry,  and  Samuel  Adams,  were 
inspired  by  the  same  cause.  The  words  of  Patrick  Henry, 
"  Give  me  liberty  or  give  me  death,"  have  in  them  the  es 
sence  of  immortality  because  they  voice  the  supreme  feel 
ing  of  one  of  the  critical  ages  in  the  world's  history. 

Benjamin  Franklin  was  the  greatest  writer  of  the  period. 
His  Autobiography  has  a  value  possessed  by  no  other  work 
of  the  kind.  This  and  his  Poor  Richard's  Almanac  have 
taught  generations  of  Americans  the  duty  of  self-culture, 
self-reliance,  thrift,  and  the  value  of  practical  common  sense. 
He  was  the  first  of  our  writers  to  show  a  balanced  sense  of 
humor  and  to  use  it  as  an  agent  in  impressing  truth  on 
unwilling  listeners.  He  is  an  equally  great  apostle  of 
the  practical  and  the  altruistic,  although  he  lacked  the 
higher  spirituality  of  the  old  Puritans  and  of  the  Quaker, 
John  Woolman.  This  age  is  marked  by  a  comparative  de 
cline  in  the  influence  of  the  clergy.  Not  a  single  clerical 
name  appears  on  the  list  of  the  most  prominent  writers. 

This  period  shows  the  beginning  of  American  fiction, 
dominated  by  English  writers,  like  Samuel  Richardson. 


SUMMARY  103 

The  early  novels,  like  Mrs.  Morton's  The  Power  of 
Sympathy,  were  usually  prosy,  didactic,  and  as  dull  as  the 
Sunday  school  books  of  three  quarters  of  a  century  ago. 
The  victory  of  the  English  school  of  romanticists  influ 
enced  Charles  Brockden  Brown,  the  first  professional 
American  author,  to  throw  off  the  yoke  of  classical 
didacticism  and  regularity  and  to  write  a  group  of  Gothic 
romances,  in  which  the  imagination  was  given  a  freer  rein 
than  the  intellect.  While  he  freely  employed  the  imported 
Gothic  elements  of  "strangeness  added  to  terror,"  he 
nevertheless  managed  to  give  a  distinctively  American  col 
oring  to  his  work  by  showing  the  romantic  use  to  which 
the  Indian  and  the  forest  could  be  put. 

Authors  struggled  intensely  to  write  poetry.  "  The 
Hartford  Wits,"  Dwight,  Barlow,  and  Trurnbull,  wrote  a 
vast  quantity  of  verse.  The  most  of  this  is  artificial,  and 
reveals  the  influence  of  the  classical  school  of  Alexander 
Pope.  Freneau  wrote  a  few  short  lyrics  which  suggest  the 
romantic  school  of  Wordsworth. 

The  American  literature  of  this  period  shows  in  the 
main  the  influence  of  the  oilier  English  classical  school. 
America  produced  no  authors  who  can  rank  with  the 
contemporary  school  of  English  writers,  such  as  Burns, 
Wordsworth,  and  Coleridge.  Of  all  the  writers  of  this 
age,  FrpnkHr)  alone  shows  an  undiminished  popularity 
with  readers  of  the  twentieth  century. 

Three  events  in  the  history  of  the  period  are  epoch- 
making  in  the  world's  history ;  (a)  the  securing  of  inde 
pendence  through  the  Revolutionary  War,  (£)the  adoption 
of  a  constitution  and  the  formation  of  a  republic,  and 
(c)  the  magnitude  of  the  work  of  the  pioneer  settlers,  who 
advanced  steadily  west  from  the  coast,  and  founded  com 
monwealths  beyond  the  Alleghanies.. 


104 


THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 


REFERENCES   FOR   FURTHER   STUDY 
HISTORICAL 

The  course  of  English  events  (reign  of  George  III.)  may  be  traced 
in  any  of  the  English  histories  mentioned  on  p.  60.  For  the  English 
literature  of  the  period,  see  the  author's  History  of  English  Literature. 

Valuable  works  dealing  with  special  periods  of  the  American  history 
of  the  time  are  :  — 

Hart's  Formation  of  the  Union. 

Parkman's  Half  Century  of  Conflict  and  Montcalm  and  Wolfe, 
2  vols.  (French  and  Indian  War.) 

Fiske's  American  Revolution,  2  vols. 

Fiske's  Critical  Period  of  American  Histery. 

Walker's  The  Making  of  the  Nation. 

Johnston's  History  of  American  Politics. 

Schouler's  History  of  the  United  States  of  America  under  the  Con 
stitution,  6  vols. 

The  works  by  Hart,  Channing,  and  James  and  Sanford,  referred  to 
on  p.  61,  will  give  the  leading  events  in  brief  compass.  An  account  of 
much  of  the  history  of  the  period  is  given  in  the  biographies  of  Wash 
ington  by  Lodge,  of  Franklin  by  Morse,  of  Hamilton  by  Lodge,  and  of 
Jefferson  by  Morse.  (American  Statesmen  Series.} 

LITERARY 

Tyler's  The  Literary  History  of  the  American  Revolution,  2  vols. 
Richardson's  American  Literature,  2  vols. 
Wendell's  Literary  History  of  America. 
Trent's  A  History  of  American  Literature. 
McMaster's  Benjamin  Franklin. 
Ford's  The  Many-Sided  Franklin. 

Erskine's  Leading  American  Novelists,  pp.  3-49*  on  Charles  Brock- 
den  Brown. 

Loshe's  The  Early  American  Novel. 

SUGGESTED   READINGS 

The  Essayists.  —  Selections  from  Thomas  Paine's  Common  Sense, — 
Cairns,^  344-347;  Carpenter,  66-70 ;  S.  &  H.,  III.,  219-221.    From  the 
Crisis,  —  Cairns,  347~352  ;  Carpenter,  70,  71 ;  3.  &  H.,  III.,  222-225. 
1  Foi  full  titles  see  p.  62. 


QUESTIONS  AND  SUGGESTIONS  105 

Jefferson's  Declaration  of  Independence — which  may  be  found  in 
Carpenter,  79-83  ;  S.  &  H.,III.,  286-289  5  and  in  almost  all  the  histories 
of  the  United  States — should  be  read  several  times  until  the  very 
atmosphere  or  spirit  of  those  days  comes  to  the  reader. 

Selections  from  Alexander  Hamilton,  including  a  paper  from  the 
Federalist,  may  be  found  in  Cairns,  363-369;  S.  &  H.,  IV.,  113-116. 

The  Orators.  —  A  short  selection  from  Otis  is  given  in  this  work, 
p.  72.  A  longer  selection  may  be  found  in  Vol.  I.  of  Johnston's  Ameri 
can  Orations,  11-17.  For  Patrick  Henry's  most  famous  speech,  see 
Cairns,  335~338 ;  s-  &  H->  Inv  214-218;  Johnston,  I.,  18-23.  The 
speech  of  Samuel  Adams  on  American  Independence  is  given  in  Johns 
ton,  I.,  24-38,  and  in  Moore's  American  Eloquence,  Vol.  I. 

Benjamin  Franklin.  —  Every  one  should  read  his  Autobiography. 
Selections  may  be  found  in  Carpenter,  31-36;  Cairns,  322-332;  T.  & 
W.,  III.,  192-201  ;  S.  &  H.,  III.,  3-13. 

Read  his  Way  to  Wealth  either  in  the  various  editions  of  Poor 
Richard^s  Almanac  or  in  Cairns,  315-319  ;  Carpenter,  36-43  ;  T.  &  W., 
III.,  202-213  ;  S.  &  H.,  III.,  17-21. 

John  Woolman.  — Cairns,  307-313  ;  S.  &  H.,  III.,  78-80,  82-85. 

Charles  Brockden  Brown.  —  The  first  volume  of  Arthur  Mervyn 
with  its  account  of  the  yellow  fever  epidemic  in  Philadelphia  is  not 
uninteresting  reading.  Chaps.  XVI.,  XVII.,  and  XVIII.  of  Edgar 
Huntly  show  the  hero  of  that  romance  rescuing  a  girl  from  torture  and 
killing  Indians.  These  and  the  following  chapters,  especially  XIX., 
XX.,  and  XXI.,  give  some  vigorous  out-of-door  life. 

Selections  giving  incidents  of  the  yellow  fever  plague  may  be  found 
in  Cairns,  482-488  ;  Carpenter,  97-100.  For  Indian  adventures  or  out- 
of-door  life  in  Edgar  Himtly,  see  Cairns,  488-493 ;  Carpenter,  89-97 ; 
S.  &  H.,  IV.,  273-292. 

Poetry.  —  Selections  from  Dwight,  Barlow,  and  Trumbull  may  be 
found  in  Cairns,  395-430;  S.  &  H.,  III.,  403-413*  426-429,  IV.,  47- 
55.  For  Freneau's  best  lyrics,  see  Cairns,  440,  441,  447  ;  S.  &  H.,  III., 
452>  453?  456" ;  Stedman,  An  American  Anthology,  4,  7,  8. 


QUESTIONS   AND   SUGGESTIONS 

Prosd.  —  After  reading  some  of  the  papers  of  Thomas  Paine,  state 
why  they  were  unusually  well  suited  to  the  occasion.  Why  is  the 
Dec-laration  of  Independence  likened  t©  the  old  battle  songs  of  the 


106  THE  EMERGENCE  OF  A  NATION 

Anglo-Saxon  race  ?  What  is  remarkable  about  Jefferson's  power  of 
expression  ?  In  the  orations  of  Otis,  Patrick  Henry,  and  Samuel 
Adams,  what  do  you  find  to  account  for  their  influence  ?  To  what 
must  an  orator  owe  his  power  ? 

Contrast  the  writings  of  Benjamin  Franklin  with  those  of  Jonathan 
Edwards  and  John  Woolman.  What  are  some  of  the  most  useful 
suggestions  and  records  of  experience  to  be  found  in  Franklin's  Auto 
biography?  In  what  ways  are  his  writings  still  useful  to  humanity? 
Select  the  best  four  maxims  from  The  Way  to  Wealth.  What  are 
some  of  the  qualities  of  Franklin's  style  ?  Compare  it  with  Woolman's 
style. 

Why  are  Brown's  romances  called  "  Gothic "  ?  What  was  the 
general  type  of  American  fiction  preceding  him  ?  Specify  three  strong 
or  unusual  incidents  in  the  selections  read  from  Brown.  What  does  he 
introduce  to  give  an  American  color  to  his  work  ? 

Poetry.  —  In  the  selections  read  from  Dwight,  Barlow,  and  Trum- 
bull,  what  general  characteristics  impress  you  ?  Do  these  poets  belong 
to  the  classic  or  the  romantic  school  ?  What  English  influences  are 
manifest  ?  What  qualities  in  Freneau's  lyrics  show  a  distinct  advance 
in  American  poetry  ? 


CHAPTER   III 
THE  NEW  YORK  GROUP 

A  New  Literary  Center.  —  We  have  seen  that  Massa 
chusetts  supplied  the  majority  of  the  colonial  writers  be 
fore  the  French  and  Indian  War.  During  the  next  period, 
Philadelphia  came  to  the  front  with  Benjamin  Franklin 
and  Charles  Brockden  Brown.  In  this  third  period,  New 
York  forged  ahead,  both  in  population  and  in  the  number 
of  her  literary  men.  Although  in  1810  she  was  smaller 
than  Philadelphia,  by  1820  she  had  a  population  of  123,706, 
which  was  15,590  more  than  Philadelphia,  and  80,408  more 
than  Boston. 

This  increase  in  urban  population  rapidly  multiplied  the 
number  of  readers  of  varied  tastes  and  developed  a  desire 
for  literary  entertainment,  as  well  as  for  instruction.  Works 
like  those  of  Irving  and  Cooper  gained  wide  circulation 
only  because  of  the  new  demands,  due  to  the  increasing 
population,  to  the  decline  in  colonial  provincialism,  and 
to  the  growth  of  the  new  national  spirit.  Probably  no 
one  would  have  been  inspired,  twenty-five  years  earlier, 
to  write  a  work  like  Irving's  Knickerbocker's  History  of 
New  York.  Even  if  it  had  been  produced  earlier,  the 
country  would  not  have  been  ready  to  receive  it.  This 
remarkable  book  was  published  in  New  York  in  1809,  and 
more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  had  passed  before  Massa 
chusetts  could  produce  anything  to  equal  that  work. 

In  the  New  York  group  there  were  three  great  writers 
whom  we  shall  discuss  separately :  Washington  Irving, 

107 


io8 


THE  NEW  YORK   GROUP 


James  Fenimore  Cooper,  and  William  Cullen  Bryant. 
Before  we  begin  to  study  them,  however,  we  may  glance 
at  two  of  the  minor  writers,  who  show  some  of  the  char 
acteristics  of  the  age. 


DRAKE  AND    HALLECK 

Two  friends,  who  in  their  early  youth  styled  themselves 
"The  Croakers," were  Joseph  Rodman  Drake  (1795-1820) 
and  Fitz-Greene  Halleck  (1790-1867), 
'the  Damon  and  Pythias  of  American 
poets."  Drake  was  born  in  New  York 
City  in  the  same  year  as  the  English 
poet,  John  Keats,  in  London.  Both 
Drake  and  Keats  studied  medicine,  and 
both  died  of  consumption  at  the  age  of 
twenty-five.  Halleck  was  born  in 
Guilford,  Connecticut,  but  moved  to 
New  York  in  early  youth,  where  he 
became  a  special  accountant  for 
John  Jacob  Astor.  Although  Hal 
leck  outlived  Drake  forty-seven 
years,  trade  seems  to  have  steril 
ized  Halleck's  poetic  power  in  his  later  life. 

The  early  joint  productions  of  Drake  and  Halleck  were 
poems  known  as  The  Croakers,  published  in  1819,  in  the 
New  York  Evening  Post.  This  stanza  from  The  Croakers 
will  show  the  character  of  the  verse  and  'its  avowed  ob 
ject  :  — 

"  There's  fun  in  everything  we  meet, 

The  greatest,  worst,  and  best ; 
Existence  is  a  merry  treat, 
And  erery  speech  a  jest : 


JOSEPH   RODMAN   DRAKE 


DRAKE   AND   HALLECK 


I09 


Be't  ours  to  watch  the  crowds  that  pass 

Where  Mirth's  gay  banner  waves  ; 
To  show  fools  through  a  quizzing-glass 

And  bastinade  the  knaves." 

This  was  written  by  Drake,  but  he  and  Halleck  together 
"  croaked  "  the  following  lines,  which  show  that  New  York 
life  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  had  some 
thing  of  the  variety  of  London  in  the  time  of  Queen 
Anne,  at  the  beginning  of 
the  eighteenth  century :  — 

t(  The  horse  that  twice  a  week  I 

ride 

At  Mother  Dawson's  eats  his  fill ; 
My  books  at  Goodrich's  abide, 
My   country   seat   is    Weehawk 

hill; 
My  morning  lounge  is  Eastburn's 

shop, 

At  Poppleton's  I  take  my  lunch, 
Niblo  prepares  my  mutton  chop, 
And  Jennings  makes  my  whiskey 

punch." 

Such  work  indicates  not 
only  a  diversified  circle  of 
readers,  who  were  not  sub 
ject  to  the  religious  and  po 
litical  stress  of  earlier  days, 
but  it  also  shows  a  desire  to  be  entertained,  which  would 
have  been  promptly  discouraged  in  Puritan  New  England. 
.We  should  not  be  surprised  to  find  that  the  literature  of 
this  period  was  swayed  by  the  new  demands,  that  it  was 
planned  to  entertain  as  well  as  to  instruct,  and  that  all  the 
writers  of  this  group,  with  the  exception  of  Bryant,  fre 
quently  placed  the  chief  emphasis  on  the  power 'to  entertain. 


FITZ-GREENE   HALLECK 


HO  THE  NEW  YORK   GROUP 

Fortunately  instruction  often  accompanies  entertainment, 
as  the  following  lines  from  The  Croakers  show :  — 

"  The  man  who  frets  at  worldly  strife 

Grows  sallow,  sour,  and  thin ; 
Give  us  the  lad  whose  happy  life 

Is  one  perpetual  grin, 
He,  Midas-like,  turns  all  to  gold." 

Drake's  best  poem,  which  is  entirely  his  own  work,  is 
The  Culprit  Fay,  written  in  1816  when  he  was  twenty-one 
years  of  age.  This  shows  the  influence  of  the  English 
romantic  school,  and  peoples  the  Hudson  River  with  fairies. 
Before  the  appearance  of  this  poem,  nothing  like  these  lines 
could  have  been  found  in  American  verse :  — 

"  The  winds  are  whist,  and  the  owl  is  still, 

The  bat  in  the  shelvy  rock  is  hid ; 
And  naught  is  heard  on  the  lonely  hill 
But  the  cricket's  chirp  and  the  answer  shrill 

Of  the  gauze-winged  katydid ; 
And  the  plaint  of  the  wailing  whip-poor-will, 

Who  moans  unseen,  and  ceaseless  sings, 
Ever  a  note  of  wail  and  woe, 

Till  morning  spreads  her  rosy  wings 
And  earth  and  sky  in  her  glances  glow." 

Although  The  Culprit  Fay  shows  the  influence  of  Cole 
ridge's  Christabel,  yet  this  American  poem  could  not  have 
been  written  by  an  English  poet.  Drake  did  not  sing  the 
praises  of  the  English  lark  and  the  nightingale ;  but  chose 
instead  an  American  bird,  the  whippoorwill,  and  a  native 
insect,  the  katydid,  and  in  writing  of  them  showed  the 
enjoyment  of  a  true  poet. 

Drake's  best  known  poem,  The  American  Flag,  which 
was  signed  "  Croaker  &  Co.,"  because  Halleck  wrote  the 
last  four  lines,  is  a  good  specimen  of  rhetorical  verse,  but 
lacks  the  poetic  feeling  of  The  Culprit  Fay. 


DRAKE  AND   HALLECK  III 

Fitz-Greene  Halleck's  best  known  poem  is  Marco  Boz- 
zaris(i82?),  an  elegy  on  the  death  of  a  Grecian  leader,  killed 
in  1823.  America's  sympathies  went  out  to  Greece  in  her 
struggles  for  independence  against  the  Turks.  In  celebrat 
ing  the  heroic  death  of  Bozzaris,  Halleck  chose  a  subject 
that  was  naturally  fitted  to  appeal  to  all  whose  liberties 
were  threatened.  This  poem  has  been  honored  with  a 
place  in  almost  all  American  anthologies.  Middle-aged 
people  can  still  remember  the  frequency  with  which  the 
poem  was  declaimed.  At  one  time  these  lines  were  perhaps 
as  often  heard  as  any  in  American  verse :  — 

"  Strike  —  till  the  last  armed  foe  expires ; 
Strike  —  for  your  altars  and  your  fires ; 
Strike  —  for  the  green  graves  of  your  sires ; 
God  —  and  your  native  land! " 

Kifty  years  ago  the  readers  of  this  poem  would  have  been 
surprised  to  be  told  that  interest  in  it  would  ever  wane,  but 
it  was  fitted  to  arouse  the  enthusiasm,  not  of  all  time,  but 
of  an  age,  —  an  age  that  knew  from  first-hand  experience 
the  meaning  of  a  struggle  for  hearth  fires  and  freedom. 
Most  critics  to-day  prefer  Halleck's  lines  On  the  Death  of 
Joseph  Rodman  Drake :  — 

"  Green  be  the  turf  above  thee, 
Friend  of  my  better  days ! 
None  knew  thee  but  to  love  thee, 
Nor  named  thee  but  to  praise." 

This  poem  is  simpler,  less  rhetorical,  and  the  vehicle  of 
more  genuine  feeling  than  Marco  Bozzaris. 

The  work  of  Drake  and  Halleck  shows  an  advance  in 
technique  and  imaginative  power.  Their  verse,  unlike  the 
satires  of  Freneau  and  Trumbull,  does  not  use  the  maiming 
cudgel,  nor  is  it  ponderous  like  Barlow's  Columbiad  or 
Dwight's  Conquest  of  Canaan. 


112 


THE  NEW  YORK   GROUP 


>v^-*^' 


WASHINGTON  IRVING,  1783-1859 

Life.  —  Irving  was  born  in  New  York  City  in  1783,  the 
year  in  which  Benjamin  Franklin  signed  at  Paris  the  treaty 
of  peace  with  England  after  the  Revolutionary  War.  Irv- 
ing's  father,  a  Scotchman  from  the  Orkney  Islands,  was 
descended  from  De  Irwyn,  armor  bearer  to  Robert  Bruce. 
Irving's  mother  was  born  in  England,  and  the  English 
have  thought  sufficiently  well  of  her  son  to  claim  that 
he  belonged  to  England  as  much  as  to  America.  In  fact, 
he  sometimes  seemed  to  them  to  be  more  English  than 


WASHINGTON   IRVING  113 

American,  especially  after  he  had  written  something  un 
usually  good. 

When  Irving  was  a  boy,  the  greater  part  of  what  is  now 
New  York  City  was  picturesque  country.  He  mingled  with 
the  descendants  of  the  Dutch,  passed  daily  by  their  old- 
style  houses,  and  had  excellent  opportunities  for  hearing 
the  traditions  and  learning  the  peculiarities  of  Manhattan's 
early  settlers,  whom  he  was  afterwards  to  immortalize  in 
American  literature.  On  his  way  to  school  he  looked  at 
the  stocks  and  the  whipping  post,  which  had  a  salaried 
official  to  attend  to  the  duties  connected  with  it.  He  could 
have  noticed  two  prisons,  one  for  criminals  and  the  other 
for  debtors.  He  could  scarcely  have  failed  to  see  the  gal 
lows,  in  frequent  use  for  offenses  for  which  the  law  to-day 
prescribes  only  a  short  term  of  imprisonment.  Notwith 
standing  the  twenty-two  churches,  the  pious  complained 
that  the  town  was  so  godless  as  to  allow  the  theaters  to  be 
open  on  Saturday  night. 

Instead  of  going  to  bed  after  the  family  prayers,  Irving 
sometimes  climbed  through  a  window,  gained  the  alley,  and 
went  to  the  theater.  In  school  he  devoured  as  many 
travels  and  tales  as  possible,  land  he  acquired  much  early 
skill  in  writing  compositions  for  boys  in  return  for  their 
assistance  in  solving  his  arithmetical  problems  —  a  task 
that  he  detested. 

At  the  age  of  fifteen  he  was  allowed  to  take  his  gun  and 
explore  the  Sleepy  Hollow  region,  which  became  the  scene 
of  one  of  his  world-famous  stories.  When  he  was  seven 
teen,  he  sailed  slowly  up  the  Hudson  River  on  his  own 
voyage  of  discovery.  Hendrick  Hudson's  exploration  of 
this  river  gave  it  temporarily  to  the  Dutch  ;  but  Irving 
annexed  it  for  all  time  to  the  realm  of  the  romantic  imag 
ination.  The  singers  and  weavers  of  legends  were  more 


THE  NEW  YORK  GROUP 


than  a  thousand  years  in  giving  to  the  Rhine,  its  high 
position  in  that  realm;  but  Irving  in  a  little  more  than  a 

decade  made  the   Hudson 
almost  its  peer. 

In  such  unique  environ 
ment,  Irving  passed  his 
boyhood.  Unlike  his 
brothers,  he  did  not  go  to 
Columbia  College,  but  like 
Charles  Brockden  Brown 
studied  law,  and  like  him 
never  seriously  practiced 
the  profession.  Under  the 
pen  name  of  "Jonathan 
Oldstyle,"  he  was  writing, 
at  the  age  of  nineteen, 
newspaper  letters,  modeled 
closely  after  Addison's 
Spectator.  Ill  health  drove 
Irving  at  twenty-one  to 
take  a  European  trip,  which  lasted  two  years.  His  next 
appearance  in  literature  after  his  return  was  in  connection 
with  his  brother,  William  Irving,  and  James  K.  Paulding. 
The  three  started  a  semi-monthly  periodical  called  Salma 
gundi,  fashioned  after  Addison's  Spectator  and  Goldsmith's 
Citizen  of  the  World.  The  first  number  was  published 
January  24,  1807,  and  the  twentieth  and  last,  January  25, 
1 808.  "  In  Irving's  contributions  to  it,"  says  his  biographer, 
"may  be  traced  the  germs  of  nearly  everything  he  did 
afterwards." 

The  year  1809  was  the  most  important  in  Irving's  young 
life.  In  that  year  Matilda  Hoffman,  to  whom  he  was 
engaged,  died  in  her  eighteenth  year.  Although  he  out- 


IRVING    AT  THE  AGE  OF  TWENTY-TWO 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  115 

lived  her  fifty  years,  he  remained  a  bachelor,  and  he  carried 
her  Bible  with  him  wherever  he  traveled  in  Europe  or 
America.  In  the  same  year  he  finished  one  of  his  master 
pieces,  Diedrich  Knickerbocker's  History  of  New  York. 
Even  at  this  time  he  had  not  decided  to  follow  literature 
as  a  profession. 

In  1815  he  went  to  England  to  visit  his  brother,  who 
was  in  business  there.  It  was  not,  however,  until  the 
failure  of  his  brother's  firm  in  1818  that  Irving  determined 
to  make  literature  his  life  work.  While  in  London  he  wrote 
the  Sketch  Book  (1819),  which  added  to  his  fame  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic.  This  visit  abroad  lasted  seventeen 
years.  Before  he  returned,  in  1832,  he  had  finished  the 
greater  part  of  the  literary  work  of  his  life.  Besides  the 
Sketch  Book,  he  had  written  Bracebridge  Hall,  Tales  of  a 
Traveller,  Life  and  Voyages  of  Christopher  Columbus,  The 
Conquest  of  Granada,  The  Companions  of  Columbus,  and  The 
Alhambra.  He  had  been  secretary  of  the  American  lega 
tion  at  Madrid  and  at  London.  He  had  actually  lived  in 
the  Alhambra. 

Soon  after  his  return,  he  purchased  a  home  at  Tarry- 
town  (now  Irvington)  in  the  Sleepy  Hollow  district  on  the 
Hudson.  He  named  his  new  home  "  Sunnyside."  With 
the  exception  of  four  years  (1842- 1846),  when  he  served  as 
minister  to  Spain,  Irving  lived  here,  engaged  in  literary 
work,  for  the  remainder  of  his  life.  When  he  died  in  1859, 
he  was  buried  in  the  Sleepy  Hollow  cemetery,  near  his 
home. 

Long  before  his  death  he  was  known  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic  as  America's  greatest  author.  Englishmen 
who  visited  this  country  expressed  a  desire  to  see  its  two 
wonders,  Niagara  Falls  and  Irving.  His  English  publish 
ers  alone  paid  him  over  $60,000  for  copyright  sales  of  his 


n6 


THE -NEW  YORK  GROUP 


books  in  England.     Before  he  died,  he  had  earned  more 
than  $200,000  with  his  pen. 

Irving's  personality  won  him  friends  wherever  he  went. 
He  was  genial  and  kindly,  and  his  biographer  adds  that  it 
was  never  Irving's  habit  to  stroke  the  world  the  wrong 
way.  One  of  his  maxims  was,  "  When  I  cannot  get  a  din 
ner  to  suit  my  taste,  I  endeavor  to  get  a  taste  to  suit  my 
dinner." 


SUNNYSIDE,    IRVING'S   HOME   AT  TARRYTOWN 

Knickerbocker's  History  of  New  York.  — The  New  York 
Evening  Post  for  December  28,  1809,  said:  "This  work 
was  found  in  the  chamber  of  Mr.  Diedrich  Knickerbocker, 
the  old  gentleman  whose  sudden  and  mysterious  disappear 
ance  has  been  noticed.  It  is  published  in  order  to  dis 
charge  certain  debts  he  has  left  behind."  This  disguise, 
however,  was  too  thin  to  deceive  the  public,  and  the  work 


WASHINGTON   IRVING  1 17 

was  soon  popularly  called  Irving's  Knickerbocker's  History 
of  New  York. 

Two  hundred  years  before  its  publication,  Hendrick 
Hudson,  an  explorer  in  the  service  of  Holland,  had  sailed 
into  New  York  Bay  and  discovered  Manhattan  Island  and 
the  Hudson  River  for  the  Dutch.  They  founded  the  city 
of  New  Amsterdam  and  held  it  until  the  English  captured 
it  in  1664.  Irving  wrote  the  history  of  this  settlement 
during  the  Dutch  occupation.  He  was  led  to  choose  this 
subject,  because,  as  he  tells  us,  few  of  his  fellow  citizens 
were  aware  that  New  York  had  ever  been  called  New 
Amsterdam,  and  because  the  subject,  "poetic  from  its  very 
obscurity,"  was  especially  available  for  an  American  author, 
since  it  gave  him  a  chance  to  adorn  it  with  legend  and 
fable.  He  states  that  his  object  was  "  to  embody  the  tra 
ditions  of  our  city  in  an  amusing  form  "  and  to  invest  it 
"  with  those  imaginative  and  whimsical  associations  so  sel 
dom  met  with  in  our  country,  but 
which  live  like  charms  and  spells 
about  the  cities  of  the  old  world." 

Irving  achieved  his  object  and 
produced  an   entertaining   com 
pound  of  historical  fact,  romantic 
sentiment,  exaggeration,  and  hu 
mor.     He  shows  us  the  contem 
plative  Dutchmen  on   their   first 
voyage  in  the  Half  Moon,  sailing 
into  New   York   Bay,  prohibited  THE  OFRCIAL  WEIGHT 

by  Hudson  "from  wearing  more  than  five  jackets  and  six 
pair  of  breeches."  We  see  the  scrupulously  "honest" 
Dutch  traders  buying  furs  from  the  Indians,  using  an  in 
variable  scale  of  avoirdupois  weights,  a  Dutchman's  hand 
in  the  scale  opposite  the  furs  weighing  one  pound,  his  foot 


n8 


THE  NEW  YORK   GROUP 


A  ONE-PIPE    JOURNEY 


two  pounds.  We  watch  the  puzzled  Indians  trying  to  ac 
count  for  the  fact  that  the  largest  bundle  of  furs  never 
weighed  more  than  two  pounds.  We  attend  a  council  of 
burghers  at  Communipaw,  called  to  devise 
means  to  protect  their  town  from  an  Eng- 
.£  lish  expedition.  While  they  are  thought 
fully  smoking,  the  English  sail  by  without 
seeing  the  smoke-enveloped  town.  Irving 
shows  us  the  Dutchmen  estimating  their 
distances  and  time  by  the  period  consumed 
in  smoking  a  pipe,  —  Hartford,  Connecti 
cut,  being  two  hundred  pipes  distant.  He 
allows  us  to  watch  a  housewife  emptying 
her  pocket  in  her  search  for  a  wooden 
ladle  and  filling  two  corn  baskets  with  the 
contents.  He  takes  us  to  a  tea  party  attended  by  "  the 
higher  classes  or  noblesse,  that  is  to  say  such  as  kept  their 
own  cows  and  drove  their  own  wagons,"  where  we  can  see 
the  damsels  knitting  their  own  woolen  stockings  and  the 
vrouws  serving  big  apple  pies,  bushels  of  doughnuts,  and 
pouring  tea  out  of  a  fat  Delft  teapot.  He  draws  this 
picture  of  Wouter  Van  Twiller,  Governor 
of  New  Amsterdam  :  — 

"  The  person  of  this  illustrious  old  gentleman 
was  formed  and  proportioned  as  though  it  had  been 
moulded  by  the  hands  of  some  cunning  Dutch  statu 
ary,  as  a  model  of  majesty  and  lordly  grandeur. 
He  was  exactly  five  feet  six  inches  in  height,  and 
six  feet  five  inches  in  circumference.  His  head  was 
a  perfect  sphere.  .  .  . 

"His  habits  were  as  regular  as  his  person.     He 

daily  took  his  four  stated  meals,  appropriating  exactly  an  hour  to  each  ; 
he  smoked  and  doubted  eight  hours,  and  he  slept  the  remaining  twelve 
of  the  four-and-twenty." 


WOUTER  VAN  TWILLER 


WASHINGTON  IRVING 


119 


The  Sketch  Book  Group.  —  The  only  one  of  his  produc 
tions  to  which  Irving  gave  the  name  of  The  Sketch  Book 
was  finished  in  1820,  the  year  in  which  Scott's  Ivanhoe> 
Keats's  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  and  Shelley's  Prometheus  Unbound 
appeared.  Of  the  same  general  order  as  The  Sketch  Book 
are  Irving's  Bracebridge  Hall  (1822)  and  Tales  of  a 
Traveller  (1824).  These  volumes  all  contain  short  stories, 
essays,  or  sketches,  many  of  which  are  suggestive  of 
Addison's  Spectator.  The  Sketch  Book  is  the  most  fa 
mous  of  Irving's  works  of  this  class.  While  it  contains 
some  excellent  essays  or  descriptions,  such  as  those  en 
titled  Westminster  Abbey  and  Stratford-on-Avon,  the  book 
lives  to-day  because  of  two  short  stories,  Rip  Van  Winkle 
and  The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow.  These  were  not  equaled 
by  Addison,  and  they  have  not  been  surpassed  by  any 
English  writers  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Both  stories 
take  their  rise  from  the  "  Knickerbocker  Legend,"  and  they 
are  thoroughly  American  in  coloring 
and  flavor,  even  if  they  did  happen  to 
be  written  in  England.  No  story  in  our 
literature  is  better  known  than  that  of  Rip 
Van  Winkle  watching  Hendrick  Hudson 
and  his  ghostly  crew  playing 
ninepins  in  the  Catskill  Moun 
tains  and  quaffing  the  magic 
liquor  which  caused  him  to  sleep 
for  twenty  years. 

For  nearly  one  hundred  years 
Ichabod    Crane's    courtship    of 
Katrina  Van  Tassel,  in  The  Legend 
of  Sleepy  Hollow,  has  continued  to 

j  ICHABOD   CRANE 

amuse  its  readers.     The  Indian  sum 
mer  haze  is  still  resting  on  Sleepy  Hollow,  our  American 


120  THE  NEW  YORK   GROUP 

Utopia,  where  we  can  hear  the  quail  whistling,  see  the  brook 
bubbling  along  among  alders  and  dwarf  willows,  over  which 
amber  clouds  float  forever  in  the  sky ;  where  the  fragrant 
buckwheat  fields  breathe  the  odor  of  the  beehive;  where  the 
slapjacks  are  "well  buttered  and  garnished  with  honey  or 
treacle,  by  the  delicate  little  dimpled  hand  of  Katrina  Van 
Tassel,"  where  a  greeting  awaits  us  from  the  sucking  pigs 
already  roasted  and  stuffed  with  pudding ;  where  the  very 
tea  tables  of  the  Dutch  housewives  welcome  us  with  loads 
of  crisp  crumbling  crullers,  honey  cakes,  and  "  the  whole 
family  of  cakes,"  surrounded  by  pies,  preserves,  roast 
chicken,  bowls  of  cream,  all  invested  with  a  halo  from  the 
spout  of  the  motherly  Dutch  teapot. 

The  Alhambra,  a  book  of  tales  of  the  old  Moorish  palace 
in  Granada,  Spain,  has  been  aptly  termed  "  The  Spanish 
Sketch  Book."  This  has  preserved  the  romance  of  de 
parted  Moorish  glory  almost  as  effectively  as  the  Knicker 
bocker  sketches  and  stories  have  invested  the  early  Dutch 
settlers  of  New  York  with  something  like  Homeric  immor 
tality.  A  traveler  in  Spain  writes  of  The  Alhambra:  "  Not 
Ford,  nor  Murray,  nor  Hare  has  been  able  to  replace  it. 
The  tourist  reads  it  within  the  walls  it  commemorates  as 
conscientiously  as  the  devout  read  Ruskin  in  Florence."  1 

In  his  three  works,  The  Sketch  Book,  The  Tales  of  a 
Traveller,  and  The  Alhambra,  Irving  proved  himself  the 
first  American  master  of  the  short  tale  or  sketch,  yet  he  is 
not  the  father  of  the  modern  short  story,  which  aims  to 
avoid  every  sentence  unless  it  directly  advances  the  narra 
tive  or  heightens  the  desired  impression.  His  description 
and  presentation  of  incident  do  not  usually  tend  to  one  defi 
nite  goal,  after  the  fashion  theoretically  prescribed  by  the 
art  of  the  modern  short  story.  The  author  of  a  modern 

1  Introduction  to  Pennell's  illustrated  edition  of  The  Alhambra. 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  121 

short  tale  would  need  to  feel  the  dire  necessity  of  recording 
the  sage  observation  of  a  Dutch  housewife,  that  "  ducks 
and  geese  are  foolish  things,  and  must  be  looked  after,  but 
girls. can  take  care  of  themselves."  Irving,  however,  in 
The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow,  has  sufficient  leisure  to 
make  this  observation  and  to  stop  to  listen  to  "  the  pensive 
whistle  of  the  quail,"  or  to  admire  "  great  fields  of  Indian 
corn,  with  its  golden  ears  peeping  from  their  leafy  coverts, 
and  holding  out  the  promise  of  cakes  and  hasty  puddings." 

Some  have  even  proposed  that  his  stories  be  called 
"narrative-essays,"  but  they  show  a  step  beyond  Addison 
in  the  evolution  of  the  short  story  because  they  contain 
less  essay  and  more  story.  It  is  true  that  Irving  writes 
three  pages  of  essay  before  beginning  the  real  story  in  The 
Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow,  but  the  most  of  this  preliminary 
matter  is  very  interesting  description.  The  quiet  valley 
with  its  small  brook,  the  tapping  woodpecker,  the  drowsy 
shade  of  the  trees,  the  spots  haunted  by  the  headless 
Hessian,  —  all  fascinate  us  and  provide  an  atmosphere 
which  the  modern  short-story  teller  too  seldom,  secures. 
The  novice  in  modern  short-story  writing  should  know  at 
the  outset  that  it  takes  more  genius  to  succeed  with  a  story 
like  The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow  than  with  a  tale  where 
the  writer  relies  on  the  more  strait-laced  narration  of 
events  to  arouse  interest. 

History  and  Biography. — -Of  The  Life  and  Voyages  of 
Christopher  Columbus  (1828),  Irving  said  "  it  cost  me  more 
toil  and  trouble  than  all  my  other  productions."  While  the 
method  of  scientific  historical  study  has  completely  changed 
since  his  time,  no  dry-as-dust  historian  has  yet  equaled  Irv 
ing  in  presenting  the  human  side  of  Columbus,  his  ideals, 
his  dreams,  and  his  mastery  of  wind  and  wave  and  human 
nature  in  the  greatest  voyage  of  the  ages.  Others  have 


122  THE  NEW  YORK   GROUP 

written  of  him  as  a  man  who  once  lived  but  who  died  so 
very  long  ago  that  he  now  has  no  more  life  than  the  por 
traits  of  those  old  masters  who  made  all  their  figures  look 
like  paralytics.  Irving  did  not  write  this  work  as  if  he 
were  imagining  a  romance.  He  searched  for  his  facts  in 
all  the  musty  records  which  he  could  find  in  Spain,  but  he 
then  remembered  that  they  dealt  with  a  living,  enthusias 
tic  human  being,  sometimes  weak,  and  sometimes  invested 
with  more  than  the  strength  of  all  the  generations  that  had 
died  without  discovering  the  New  World.  It  was  this 
work  which,  more  than  any  other,  brought  Irving  the  de 
gree  of  D.C.L.  from  Oxford  University.  And  yet,  when  he 
appeared  to  take  his  degree,  the  undergraduates  of  Oxford 
voiced  the  judgment  of  posterity  by  welcoming  him  with 
shouts  of  "  Diedrich  Knickerbocker !  "  "  Ichabod  Crane  !  " 
"  Rip  Van  Winkle  !" 

The  Conquest  of  Granada  (1829)  is  a  thrilling  narrative 
of  the  subjugation  by  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  of  the  last 
kingdom  of  the  Moors  in  Spain.  In  this  account,  royal 
leaders,  chivalrous  knights,  single-handed  conflicts,  and 
romantic  assaults  make  warfare  seem  like  a  carnival  in 
stead  of  a  tragedy. 

The  life  of  Oliver  Goldsmith  (1849)  ranks  among  the 
best  biographies  yet  written  by  an  American,  not  because 
of  its  originality,  but  for  its  exquisitely  sympathetic  por 
traiture  of  an  English  author  with  whom  Irving  felt  close 
kinship. 

His  longest  work,  the  Life  of  George  Washington  (1%^- 
1859),  lacks  the  imaginative  enthusiasm  of  youth,  but  it 
does  justice  to  "the  magnificent  patience,  the  courage  to 
bear  misconstruction,  the  unfailing  patriotism,  the  practical 
sagacity,  the  level  balance  of  judgment  combined  with  the 
wisest  toleration,  the  dignity  of  mind,  and  the  lofty  moral 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  123 

nature,"  which  made  George  Washington  the  one  man 
capable  of  leading  a  forlorn  army  in  the  Revolution,  of  pre 
siding  over  the  destinies  of  the  young  Republic,  and  of 
taking  a  sure  place  among  the  few  great  heroes  of  all 
time.  This  work  is  also  an  almost  complete  history  of  the 
Revolutionary  War.  It  is  unfortunate  that  the  great  length 
of  this  Life  (eight  volumes)  has  resulted  in  such  a  narrow 
ing  of  its  circle  of  readers. 

General  Characteristics. — Washington  Irving  is  the  ear 
liest  American  whose  most  popular  works  are  read  for 
pure  pleasure  and  not  for  some  historical  or  educational 
significance.  His  most  striking  qualities  are  humor  and 
restrained  sentiment.  The  work  by  which  he  will  be  long 
est  known  is  his  creation  of  the  "  Knickerbocker  Legend  " 
in  the  History  of  New  York  and  his  two  most  famous  short 
stories,  Rip  Van  Winkle  and  TJie  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow. 
Although  he  is  not  the  father  of  the  modern  short  story, 
which  travels  like  an  airship  by  the  shortest  line  to  its 
destination,  he  is  yet  one  of  the  great  nineteenth-century 
story  tellers.  Some  of  his  essays  or  papers,  like  Westmin 
ster  Abbey,  Stratford-on-Avon,  and  Christmas  do  not  suffer 
by  comparison  with  Addison's  writings. 

Much  of  Irving's  historical  work  and  many  of  his  essays 
do  not  show  great  depth  or  striking  originality.  He  did 
some  hack  writing,  dealing  with  our  great  West,  but  the 
work  by  which  he  is  best  known  is  so  original  that  no  other 
American  writers  can  for  a  moment  compare  with  him  in 
his  special  field.  He  gave  us  our  own  Homeric  age  and 
peopled  it  with  Knickerbockers,  who  are  as  entertaining  as 
Achilles,  Priam,  or  Circe. 

His  best  work  is  a  product  of  the  romantic  imagination, 
but  his  romanticism  is  of  a  finer  type  than  that  of  Charles 
Brockden  Brown  and  the  English  Gothic  school  (p.  88),  for 


124 


THE  NEW  YORK   GROUP 


Irving's  fondness  for  Addison  and  Goldsmith,  in  conjunction 
with  his  own  keen  sense  of  humor,  taught  him  restraint, 
balance,  and  the  adaptation  of  means  to  ends. 

unusual  power  of  investing  his  sub 
jects    with    the    proper    atmos 
phere.     In    this    he    resembles 
the    greatest    landscape 
painters.     If   he    writes    of 
the   early    settlers   of    New 
York,    we   are    in    a 
Dutch      atmosphere. 
If  he  tells  the  legends 
of  the  Alhambra,  the 
atmosphere  is  Moorish.    If 
he  takes  us  to  the  Hudson  or  the 
Catskills   or   Sleepy    Hollow    or 
Granada,  he  adds  to  our  artistic 
enjoyment  by  enveloping  every 
thing  in  its  own  peculiar  atmosphere. 

His  clear,  simple,  smooth  prose  conceals  its  artistic  finish 
so  well  and  serves  as  the  vehicle  for  so  much  humor,  that 
readers  often  pass  a  long  time  in  his  company  without  ex 
periencing  fatigue.  His  style  has  been  criticized  for  lack 
of  vigor  and  for  resemblance  to  Goldsmith's.  Irving's 
style,  however,  is  his  own,  and  it  is  the  style  natural  to  a 
man  of  his  placid,  artistic  temperament. 

America  takes  special  pride  in  Washington  Irving,  be 
cause  he  was  the  first  author  to  invest  her  brief  history 
with  the  enduring  fascination  of  romance.  We  shall  the 
better  appreciate  our  debt  to  him,  if  we  imagine  that  some 
wizard  has  the  power  to  subtract  from  our  literature  the 
inimitable  Knickerbocker,  Rip  Van  Winkle,  Sleepy  Hollow, 
and  our  national  romantic  river,  the  storied  Hudson. 


IRVING'S  GRAVE   IN  THE  SLEEPY 
HOLLQW  CEMETERY 


JAMES  FENIMORE   COOPER 


125 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER,  1789-1851 

Youth. —  Cooper's  place  in  American  literature  is  chiefly 
based  on  his  romantic  stories  of  the  pioneer  and  the  Indian. 
We  have  seen  how  Captain  John  Smith  won  the  ear  of  the 
world  by  his  early  story  of  Indian  adventure,  how  Charles 
Brockden  Brown  in  Edgar  Huntly  deliberately  selected 
the  Indian  and  the  life  of  the  wilderness  as  good  material 
for  an  American  writer  of  romance.  Cooper  chose  these 
very  materials  and  used  them  with  a  success  attained  by  no 
other  writer.  Let  us  see  how  his  early  life  fitted  him  to 
write  of  the  Indian,  the  pioneer,  the  forest,  and  the  sea. 


126  THE  NEW  YORK  GROUP 

He  was  born  in  Burlington,  New  Jersey,  in  1789,  the 
year  made  memorable  by  the  French  Revolution.  While 
he  was  still  an  infant,  the  Cooper  family  moved  to  the 
southeastern  shore  of  Otsego  Lake  and  founded  the  village 
of  Cooperstown,  at  the  point  where  the  Susquehanna  River 
furnishes  an  outlet  for  the  lake.  In  this  romantic  place 
he  passed  the  most  impressionable  part  of  his  boyhood. 

At  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Cooperstown  was 
one  of  the  outposts  of  civilization.  Few  clearings  had 
been  made  in  the  vast  mysterious  forests,  which  appealed 
so  deeply  to  the  boy's  imagination,  and  which  still  sheltered 
deer,  bear,  and  Indians.  The  most  vivid  local  story  which 
his  young  ears  heard  was  the  account  of  the  Cherry  Valley 
massacre,  which  had  taken  place  a  few  miles  from  Coopers- 
town  only  eleven  years  before  he  was  born.  Cooper  him 
self  felt  the  fascination  of  the  trackless  forests  before  he 
communicated  it  to  his  readers. 

He  entered  Yale  in  1802,  but  he  did  not  succeed  in 
eradicating  his  love  of  outdoor  life  and  of  the  unfettered 
habits  of  the  pioneer,  and  did  not  remain  to  graduate.  The 
faculty  dismissed  him  in  his  junior  year.  It  was  unfortu 
nate  that  he  did  not  study  more  and  submit  to  the  restraints 
and  discipline  of  regular  college  life ;  for  his  prose  often 
shows  in  its  carelessness  of  construction  and  lack  of 
restraint  his  need  for  that  formal  discipline  which  was  for 
the  moment  so  grievous  to  him. 

After  Cooper  had  left  college,  his  father  decided  to 
have  him  prepare  for  the  navy.  As  there  was  no  naval 
academy,  he  adopted  the  usual  course  of  having  the  boy 
serve  a  year  on  a  merchant  vessel.  After  this  apprentice 
ship,  Cooper  entered  the  navy  as  a  midshipman.  From 
such  experiences  he  gained  sufficient  knowledge  of  the 
ocean  and  ships  to  enable  him  to  become  the  author  of 


JAMES   FENIMORE   COOPER  12} 

some  of  our  best  tales  of  the  sea.  He  resigned  from  the 
navy,  however,  in  1811,  when  he  married. 

Becomes  an  Author.  —  Cooper  had  reached  the  age  of 
thirty  without  even  attempting  to  write  a  book.  In  1820 
he  remarked  one  day  to  his  wife  that  he  thought  he  could 
write  a  better  novel  than  the  one  which  he  was  then  read 
ing  to  her.  She  immediately  challenged  him  to  try,  and  he 
promply  wrote  the  novel  called  Precaution.  He  chose  to 
have  this  deal  with  English  life  because  the  critics  of  his 
time  considered  American  subjects  commonplace  and  unin 
teresting.  As  he  knew  nothing  of  English  life  at  first  hand, 
he  naturally  could  not  make  the  pages  of  Precaution  vivid 
with  touches  of  local  color. 

This  book  was  soon  forgotten,  and  Cooper  might  never 
have  written  another,  had  not  some  sensible  friends  insisted 
that  it  was  his  patriotic  duty  to  make  American  subjects 
fashionable.  A  friend  related  to  him  the  story  of  a  spy  of 
Westchester  County,  New  York,  who  during  the  Revolution 
served  the  American  cause  with  rare  fidelity  and  sagacity. 
Cooper  was  then  living  in  this  very  county,  and,  being 
attracted  by  the  subject,  he  soon  completed  the  first  volume 
of  The  Spy,  which  was  at  once  printed.  As  he  still  doubted, 
however,  whether  his  countrymen  would  read  "a  book  that 
treated  of  their  own  familiar  interests,"  he  delayed  writing 
the  second  volume  for  several  months.  When  he  did  start 
to  write  it,  his  publisher  feared  that  it  might  be  too  long  to 
pay,  so  before  Cooper  had  thought  out  the  intervening 
chapters,  he  wrote  the  last  chapter  and  had  it  printed 
and  paged  to  satisfy  the  publisher.  When  The  Spy  was 
published  in  1821,  it  immediately  sold  well  in  America, 
although  such  was  the  bondage  to  English  standards 
of  criticism  that  many  who  read  the  book  hesitated  to 
express  an  opinion  until  they  had  heard  the  verdict  from 


128 


THE  NEW  YORK  GROUP 


England.  When  the  English  received  the  book,  however, 
they  fairly  devoured  it,  and  it  became  one  of  the  most 
widely  read  tales  of  the  early  nineteenth  century.  Harvey 
Birch,  the  hero  of  the  story,  is  one  of  the  great  characters 
of  our  early  fiction. 

Cooper  now  adopted  writing  as  a  profession.     In  less 
than  thirty  years,  he  wrote  more  than  thirty  romances,  in 


OTSEGO    HALL,   COOPERSTOWN 

most  cases  of  two  volumes  each.  When  he  went  to  Europe 
in  1826,  the  year  of  the  publication  of  The  Last  of  the 
Mohicans,  he  found  that  his  work  was  as  well  known 
abroad  as  at  home.  Sir  Walter  Scott,  who  met  Cooper  in 
Paris,  mentions  in  his  diary  for  November  6,  1826,  a  recep 
tion  by  a  French  princess,  and  adds  the  note,  "Cooper 
was  there,  so  the  American  and  Scotch  lions  took  the  field 
together. " 

Later  Years. — After  Cooper's  return  from  Europe  in 
1833,  he  spent  the  most  of  the  remaining  seventeen  years  of 
his  life  in  writing  books  at  his  early  home,  known  as  Otsego 
Hall,  in  Cooperstown.  Here  in  the  summer  of  1837  there 


JAMES   FENIMORE    COOPER  I2Q 

occurred  an  unfortunate  incident  which  embittered  the  rest 
of  his  life  and  for  a  while  made  him  the  most  unpopular  of 
American  authors.  Some  of  his  townspeople  cut  down  one 
of  his  valuable  trees  and  otherwise  misused  the  picnic 
grounds  on  a  part  of  his  estate  fronting  the  lake.  When 
he  remonstrated,  the  public  denounced  him  and  ordered  his 
books  removed  from  the  local  library.  He  then  forbade 
the  further  use  of  his  grounds  by  the  public.  Many  of  the 
newspapers  throughout  the  state  misrepresented  his  action, 
and  he  foolishly  sued  them  for  libel.  From  that  time  the 
press  persecuted  him.  He  sued  the  Albany  Evening  Jour 
nal,  edited  by  Thurlow  Weed,  and  received  four  hundred 
dollars  damage.  Weed  thereupon  wrote  in  the  New  York 
Tribune :  — 

"  The  value  of  Mr.  Cooper's  character  has  been  judicially  determined. 
It  is  worth  exactly  four  hundred  dollars." 

Cooper  promptly  sued  The  Tribune,  and  was  awarded  two 
hundred  dollars.  In  the  heat  of  this  controversy  Thurlow 
Weed  incautiously  opened  Cooper's  The  Pathfinder,  which 
had  just  appeared,  and  sat  up  all  night  to  finish  the  book. 
During  the  progress  of  these  suits,  Cooper  unfortunately 
wrote  a  novel,  Home  as  Found,  satirizing,  from  a  somewhat 
European  point  of  view,  the  faults  of  his  countrymen.  A 
friend,  trying  to  dissuade  him  from  publishing  such  matter, 
wrote,  "  You  lose  hold  on  the  American  public  by  rubbing 
down  their  shins  with  brickbats,  as  you  do."  Cooper, 
however,  published  the  book  in  1838,  and  then  there  was  a 
general  rush  to  attack  him.  A  critic  of  his  History  of  the 
Navy  of  the  United  States  of  America  (1839),  a  work  which 
is  still  an  authority  for  the  time  of  which  it  treats,  abused 
the  book  and  made  reflections  on  Cooper's  veracity.  The 
author  brought  suit  for  libel,  and  won  his  case  in  a  famous 


I30 


THE  NEW  YORK  GROUP 


trial  in  which  he  was  his  own  lawyer.  These  unfortunate 
incidents,  which  would  have  been  avoided  by  a  man  like 
Benjamin  Franklin,  diminished  the  circulation 
of  Cooper's  books  in  America  during  the  rest 
of  his  life. 

Even  on  his  deathbed  he  thought  of  the 
-  unjust  criticism  from  which  he  had  suffered, 
and  asked  his  family  not  to  aid  in  the 
preparation  of  any  account  of  his 
life.     He  died  in  1851  at  the  age  of 
sixty-two,  and  was  buried  at  Coopers- 
town.    Lounsbury  thus  concludes  an 
excellent  biography  of  this  great 
writer  of  romance  :  — 

"  America  has  had  among 
her  representatives  of  the  ir 
ritable  race  of  writers  many 
who  have  shown  far  more 
ability  to  get  on  pleasantly 
with  their  fellows  than 
Cooper.  .  .  .  But  she 
counts  on  the  scanty  roll 
of  her  men  of  letters  the 
name  of  no  one  who  acted 
from  purer  patriotism  or 
loftier  principle.  She  finds  among  them  all  no  manlier  nature  and 
no  more  heroic  soul." 

Greatest  Romances.  —  Cooper's  greatest  achievement  is 
the  series  known  as  The  Leatherstocking  Tales.  These  all 
have  as  their  hero  Leatherstocking,  a  pioneer  variously 
known  as  Hawkeye,  La  Longue  Carabine (The  Long  Rifle), 
and  Natty  Bumppo.  A  statue  of  this  great  original  crea 
tion  of  American  fiction  now  overlooks  Otsego  Lake. 
Leatherstocking  embodies  the  fearlessness,  the  energy,  the 


STATUE  OF  LEATHERSTOCKING  OVERLOOKING 
OTSEGO   LAKE 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER  131 

rugged  honesty,  of  the  worthiest  of  our  pioneers,  of  those 
men  who  opened  up  our  vast  inland  country  and  gave  it 
to  us  to  enjoy.  Ulysses  is  no  more  typically  Grecian  than 
Leatherstocking  is  American. 

The  Leatherstocking  Tales  are  five  in  number.  The 
order  in  which  they  should  be  read  to  follow  the  hero  from 
youth  to  old  age  is  as  follows :  — 

The  Deerslayer ;  or  The  First  War  Path  (I84I).1 

The  Last  of  the  Mohicans  ;  a  Narrative  of 1757  (1826). 

The  Pathfinder ;  or  the  Inland 
Sea  (1840). 

The  Pioneers  ;  or  the  Sources  of 
the  Susquehanna  (1823). 

The  Prairie  ;  a  Tale  (1827). 

This  sequence  may  be  easily 
remembered  from  the  fact  that 
the  first  chief  words  in  the  titles, 
"Deerslayer,"  "Mohicans,"  "Path 
finder,"  "Pioneers,"  and  "  Prairie," 
are  arranged  in  alphabetical  order. 
These  books  are  the  prose  Iliad 
and  Odyssey  of  the  eighteenth-cen 
tury  American  pioneer.  Instead 
of  relating  the  fall  of  Ilium,  Cooper 
tells  of  the  conquest  of  the  wilder 
ness.  The  wanderings  of  Leather- 
stocking  in  the  forest  and  the  wilderness  are  substituted 
for  those  of  Ulysses  on  the  sea.  This  story  could  not  have 
been  related  with  much  of  the  vividness  of  an  eye-witness 
of  the  events,  if  it  had  been  postponed  beyond  Cooper's 
day.  Before  that  time  had  forever  passed,  he  fixed  in 

1  The  figures  in  parenthesis  refer  to  the  date  of  publication. 


LEATHERSTOCKING 


132 


THE  NEW  YORK   GROUP 


living  romance  one  remarkable  phase  of  our  country's 
development.  The  persons  of  this  romantic  drama  were 
the  Pioneer  and  the  Indian  ;  the  stage  was  the  trackless 
forest  and  the  unbroken  wilderness. 

The  Last  of  the  Mohicans  has  been  the  favorite  of  the 
greatest  number  of  readers.  In  this  story  Chingachgook, 
the  Indian,  and  Uncas,  his  son,  share  with  Hawkeye  our 
warmest  admiration.  The  American  boy  longs  to  enter 

the  fray  to  aid  Uncas. 
Cooper  knew  that  the 
Indian  had  good  traits, 
and  he  embodied  them 
in  these  two  red  men. 
Scott  took  the  same  lib 
erty  of  presenting  the 
finer  aspects  of  chivalry 
and  neglecting  its  darker 
side.  Cooper,  however, 
does  show  an  Indian  fiend 
in  Magua. 

Cooper's  work  in  this 
series  brings  us  face  to 
face  with  the  activities 
of  nature  and  man  in 


COOPER   AT  THE   AGE   OF   FORTY-F.VE 


Qf 


Cooper  makes  us  realize  that  the  life  of  the  pioneer  was 
not  without  its  elemental  spirit  of  poetry.  We  may  feel 
something  of  this  spirit  in  the  reply  of  Leatherstocking  to 
the  trembling  Cora,  when  she  asked  him  at  midnight  what 
caused  a  certain  fearful  sound  :  — 

"  <  Lady,'  returned  the  scout,  solemnly,  '  I  have  listened  to  all  the 
sounds  of  the  woods  for  thirty  years,  as  a  man  will  listen,  whose  life 
and  death  depend  so  often  on  the  quickness  of  his  ears.  There  is  no 


JAMES   FENIMORE   COOPER  133 

whine  of  the  panther,  no  whistle  of  the  catbird,  nor  any  invention  of 
the  devilish  Mingos,  that  can  cheat  me.  I  have  heard  the  forest  moan 
like  mortal  men  in  their  affliction ;  often  and  again  have  I  listened  to 
the  wind  playing  its  music  in  the  branches  of  the  girdled  trees ;  and  I 
have  heard  the  lightning  cracking  in  the  air,  like  the  snapping  of  blaz 
ing  brush,  as  it  spitted  forth  sparks  and  forked  flames  ;  but  never  have 
I  thought  that  I  heard  more  than  the  pleasure  of  him,  who  sported  with 
the  things  of  his  hand.  But  neither  the  Mohicans,  nor  I,  who  am  a 
white  man  without  a  cross,  can  explain  the  cry  just  heard.' " 

In  addition  to  the  five  Leatherstocking  Tales,  three  other 
romances  show  special  power.  They  are  :  — 

The  Spy ;  a  Tale  of  the  Neutral  Ground  (\%2\}. 

The  Pilot ;  a  Tale  of  the  Sea  (1824). 

The  Red  Rover;  a  Tate  (1828). 

The  last  two  show  Cooper's  mastery  in  telling  stories  of 
the  sea.  Tom  Coffin,  in  The  Pilot,  is  a  fine  creation. 

Some  of  the  more  than  thirty  works  of  fiction  that 
Cooper  wrote  are  almost  unreadable,  and  some  appeal 
more  to  special  students  than  to  general  readers.  Satans- 
toe  (1845),  f°r  instance,  gives  vivid  pictures  of  mid-eight 
eenth  century  colonial  life  in  New  York. 

The  English  critic's  query,  "Who  reads  an  American 
book?"  could  have  received  the  answer  in  1820,  "The 
English  public  is  reading  Irving."  In  1833,  Morse,  the 
inventor  of  the  electric  telegraph,  had  another  answer 
ready  —  "  Europe  is  reading  Cooper."  He  said  that  as 
soon  as  Cooper's  works  were  finished  they  were  published 
in  thirty-four  different  places  in  Europe.  American  liter 
ature  was  commanding  attention  for  its  original  work. 

General  Characteristics.  —  Cooper's  best  romances  are 
masterpieces  of  action  and  adventure  in  the  forest  and  on 
the  sea.  No  other  writer  has  so  well  told  the  story  of  the 
pioneer.  He  is  not  a  successful  novelist  of  the  drawing- 
room.  His  women  are  mediocre  and  conventional,  of  the 


134  THE  NEW   YORK   GROUP 

type  described  in  the  old  Sunday  school  books.  But  when 
he  leaves  the  haunts  of  men  and  enters  the  forest,  power 
comes  naturally  to  his  pen.  His  greatest  stage  of  action 
is  the  forest.  He  loved  wild  nature  and  the  sea. 

He  often  availed  himself  of  the  Gothic  license  of  im 
probability,  his  characters  being  frequently  rescued  from 
well-nigh  impossible  situations.  His  plots  were  not  care 
fully  planned  in  advance ;  they  often  seem  to  have  been 
suggested  by  an  inspiration  of  the  moment.  He  wrote  so 
rapidly  that  he  was  careless  about  the  construction  of  his 
sentences,  which  are  sometimes  not  even  grammatical. 

It  is  easy,  however,  to  exaggerate  Cooper's  faults,  which 
do  not,  after  all,  seriously  interfere  with  the  enjoyment  of 
his  works.  A  teacher,  who  was  asked  to  edit  critically  The 
Last  of  the  Mohicans,  said  that  the  first  time  he  read  it,  the 
narrative  carried  him  forward  with  such  a  rush,  and  bound 
him  with  such  a  spell,  that  he  did  not  notice  a  single  blem 
ish  in  plot  or  style.  A  boy  reading  the  same  book  obeyed 
the  order  to  retire  at  eleven,  but  having  reached  the 
point  where  Uncas  was  taken  prisoner  by  the  Hurons, 
found  the  suspense  too  great,  and  quietly  got  the  book 
and  read  the  next  four  chapters  in  bed.  Cooper  has  in  a 
preeminent  degree  the  first  absolutely  necessary  qualifica 
tion  of  the  writer  of  fiction  — the  power  to  hold  the  interest. 
In  some  respects  he  resembles  Scott,  but  although  the 
"Wizard  of  the  North  "  has  a  far  wider  range  of  excellence, 
Leatherstocking  surpasses  any  single  one  of  Scott's  crea 
tions  and  remains  a  great  original  character  added  to 
the  literature  of  the  world.  These  romances  have  strong 
ethical  influence  over  the  young.  They  are  as  pure  as 
mountain  air,  and  they  teach  a  love  for  manly,  noble,  and 
brave  deeds.  "  He  fought  for  a  principle,"  says  Cooper's 
biographer,  "  as  desperately  as  other  men  fight  for  life." 


WILLIAM   CULLEN   BRYANT 


135 


WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT,  1794-1878 

Life. — The  early  environment  of  each  of  the  three  great 
members  of  the  New  York  group  determined  to  an  un 
usual  degree  the  special  literary  work  for  which  each 
became  famous.  Had  Irving  not  been  steeped  in  the 
legends  of  the  early  Dutch  settlers  of  Manhattan,  hunted 
squirrels  in  Sleepy  Hollow,  and  voyaged  up  the  Hudson 
past  the  Catskills,  he  would  have  had  small  chance  of 
becoming  famous  as  the  author  of  the  "  Knickerbocker 
Legend."  Had  Cooper  not  spent  his  boyhood  on  the 
frontier,  living  in  close  touch  with  the  forest  and  the 


136  THE  NEW  YORK   GROUP 

pioneer,  we  should  probably  not  have  had  The  Leather- 
stocking  Tales.  Had  it  not  been  for  Bryant's  early  Puritan 
training  and  his  association  with  a  peculiar  type  of  nature, 
he  might  have  ended  his  days  as  a  lawyer. 

Bryant  was  born  in  Cummington,  among  the  hills  of 
western  Massachusetts.  In  her  diary,  his  mother  thus 
records  his  birth  :  — 

"Nov.  3,  1794.  Stormy,  wind  N.  E.  Churned.  Seven  in  the  even 
ing  a  son  born." 

His  poetry  will  be  better  understood,  if  we  emphasize  two 
main  facts  in  his  early  development.  In  the  first  place, 
he  was  descended  from  John  and  Priscilla  Alden  of  May 
flower  stock  and  reared  in  strict  Puritan  fashion.  Bryant's 
religious  training  determined  the  general  attitude  of  all  his 
poetry  toward  nature.  His  parents  expected  their  children 
to  know  the  Bible  in  a  way  that  can  scarcely  be  compre 
hended  in  the  twentieth  century.  Before  completing  his 
fourth  year,  his  older  brother  "  had  read  the  Scriptures 
through  from  beginning  to  end."  At  the  age  of  nine,  the 
future  poet  turned  the  first  chapter  of  Job  into  classical 
couplets,  beginning :  — 

"Job,  good  and  just,  in  Uz  had  sojourned  long, 
He  feared  his  God  and  shunned  the  way  of  wrong. 
Three  were  his  daughters  and  his  sons  were  seven, 
And  large  the  wealth  bestowed  on  him  by  heaven." 

Another  striking  fact  is  that  the  prayers  which  he  heard 
from  the  Puritan  clergy  and  from  his  father  and  grand 
father  in  family  worship  gave  him  a  turn  toward  noble 
poetic  expression.  He  said  that  these  prayers  were  often 
"  poems  from  beginning  to  end,"  and  he  cited  such  ex 
pressions  from  them  as,  "  Let  not  our  feet  stumble  on  the 
dark  mountains  of  eternal  death."  From  the  Puritan 
point  of  view,  the  boy  made  in  his  own  prayers  one  daring 


WILLIAM    CULLEN  BRYANT 


137 


variation  from  the  petitions  based  on  scriptural  sanction. 
He  prayed  that  he  "  might  receive  the  gift  of  poetic  gen 
ius,  and  write  verses  that  might  endure."  His  early 
religious  training  was  responsible  for  investing  his  poetry 
with  the  dignity,  gravity,  and  simplicity  of  the  Hebraic 
Scriptures. 

In  the  second  place,  he  passed  his  youth  in  the  fine 
scenery  of  western  Massachusetts,  which  is  in  considerable 
measure  the  counterpart  of 
the  Lake  Country  which 
bred  Wordsworth.  The 
glory  of  this  region  reap 
pears  in  his  verse ;  the  rock- 
ribbed  hills,  the  vales 
stretching  in  pensive  quiet 
ness  between  them,  the  ven 
erable  woods  of  ash,  beech, 
birch,  hemlock,  and  maple, 
the  complaining  brooks  that 
make  the  valleys  green,  the 
rare  May  days  :  — 

"When  beechen  buds  begin  to 

swell, 

And  woods  the  blue  bird's  war 
ble  know." l 

His  association  with  such 
scenes  determined  the  sub 
ject   matter   of  his  poetry,  and  his  Puritan  training  pre 
scribed  the  form  of  treatment. 

He  had  few  educational  advantages,  —  a  little  district 
schooling,  some  private  tutoring  by  a  clergyman,  seven 
months'  stay  in  Williams  College,  which  at  the  time  of  his 

1  Bryant  :    The  Yellow  Violet. 


BRYANT    AS    A    YOUNG    MAN 


138  THE  NEW  YORf   GROUP 

entrance  in  1810  had  a  teaching  staff  of  one  professor  and 
two  tutors,  besides  the  president.  Bryant  left  Williams, 
intending  to  enter  Yale ;  but  his  father,  a  poor  country 
physician  who  had  to  ride  vast  distances  for  small  fees,  was 
unable  to  give  him  any  further  college  training. 

Bryant,  at  about  the  age  of  eighteen,  soon  after  leaving 
Williams,  wrote  TJianatopsis,  —  with  the  exception  of  the 
opening  and  the  closing  parts.  He  had  already  written  at 
the  age  of  thirteen  a  satiric  poem,  The  Embargo,  which  had 
secured  wide  circulation  in  New  England.  Keenly  dis 
appointed  at  not  being  able  to  continue  his  college  educa 
tion,  he  regretfully  began  the  study  of  law  in  order  to  earn 
his  living  as  soon  as  possible.  He  celebrated  his  admission 
to  the  bar  by  writing  one  of  his  greatest  short  poems,  7b 
a  Waterfowl (\%\t>\  When  he  was  a  lawyer  practicing  in 
Great  Barrington,  Massachusetts,  he  met  Miss  Fanny 
Fairchild,  to  whom  he  addressed  the  poem;  — 
"  O  fairest  of  the  rural  maids  ! " 


FACSIMILE  OF  RECORD  OF   BRYANT'S  MARRIAGE 

Religious  in  all  things,  he  prepared  this  betrothal  prayer, 
which  they  repeated  together  before  they  were  married  in 
the  following  year:  — 

"  May  Almighty  God  mercifully  take  care  of  our  happiness  here  and 
hereafter.     May  we  ever  continue  constant  to  each  other,  and  mindful 


WILLIAM    CULLEN   BRYANT 


139 


of  our  mutual  promises  of  attachment  and  truth.  In  due  time,  if  it  be 
the  will  of  Providence,  may  we  become  more  nearly  connected  with  each 
other,  and  together  may  we  lead  a  long,  happy,  and  innocent  life,  with 
out  any  diminution  of  affection  till  we  die." 

In  1821,  the  year  in  which  Cooper  published  The  Spy 
and  Shelley  wrote  his  Adonais  lamenting  the  death  of 
Keats,  Bryant  issued  the  first  volume  of  his  verse,  which 
contained  eight  poems,  Thanatopsis,  The  Inscription  for 
Entrance  to  a  Wood,  To  a  Waterfowl,  The  Ages,  The  Frag 
ment  from  Simonides,  The  Yellow  Violet,  The  Song,  and 
Green  River.  This  was  an  epoch-making  volume  for  Ameri 
can  poetry.  Freneau's  best  lyrics  were  so  few  that  they 
had  attracted  little  attention,  but  Bryant's  1821  volume 
of  verse  furnished  a  new  standard  of  excellence,  below 
which  poets  who  aspired  to  the  first  rank  could  not  fall. 
During  the  five  years  after  its  publication,  the  sales  of 
this  volume  netted  him  a  profit  of  only  $14.92,  but  a  Bos 
ton  editor  soon  offered  him  two  hundred  dollars  a  year  for 
an  average  of  one  hundred  lines  of  verse  a  month.  Bry 
ant  accepted  the  offer,  and  wrote  poetry  in  connection  with 
the  practice  of  law. 

Unlike  Irving  and  Charles  Brockden  Brown,  Bryant 
attended  to  his  legal  work  doggedly  and  conscientiously  for 
nine  years,  but  he  never  liked  the  law,  and  he  longed  to 
be  a  professional  author.  In  1825  he  abandoned  the  law 
and  went  to  New  York  City.  Here  he  managed  to  secure 
a  livelihood  for  awhile  on  the  editorial  force^f  short-lived 
periodicals.  In  1827,  however,  he  became  assistant  editor, 
and  in  1829  editor-in-chief,  of  The  New  York  Evening  Post 
—  a  position  which  he  held  for  nearly  fifty  years,  until  his 
death. 

The  rest  of  his  life  is  more  political  and  journalistic 
than  literary.  He  made  The  Evening  Post  a  power  in  the 


140 


THE  NEW  YORK  GROUP 


development  of  the  nation,  but  his  work  as  editor  interfered 
with  his  poetry,  although  he  occasionally  wrote  verse  to 
the  end  of  his  life. 

In  middle  life  he  began  a  series  of  trips  abroad,  and  wrote 
many  letters  describing  his  travels.  To  occupy  his  atten 
tion  after  his  wife  died  in  1866,  he  translated  Homer's 
Iliad  and  Odyssey,  at  the  nearly  uniform  rate  of  forty  lines 
a  day.  This  work  still  remains  one  of  the  standard  poetic 
translations  of  Homer. 

As  the  years  passed,  he  became  New  York's  representa 
tive  citizen,  noted  for  high  ideals  in  journalism  and  for  in 
corruptible  integrity,  as  well 
as  for  the  excellence  of  his 
poetry.    He  died  in  1878, 
at  the  age  of  eighty-four, 
and  was  buried  at  Ros- 
lyn,  Long  Island,  beside 
his  wife. 

Poetry.  —  Thana- 
topsis,  probably  writ 
ten  in  1811,  was  first  pub 
lished  in  1817  in  The  North 
American  Review,  a  Boston  periodical.  One  of  the  ed 
itors  said  to  an  associate,  "  You  have  been  imposed  upon. 
No  one  ori  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  is  capable  of  writing 
such  verses."  The  associate  insisted  that  Dr.  Bryant,  the 
author,  had  left  them  at  the  office,  and  that  the  Doctor  was 
at  that  moment  sitting  in  the  State  Senate,  representing  his 
county.  The  editor  at  once  dashed  away  to  the  State  House, 
took  a  long  look  at  the  Doctor,  and  reported,  "  It  is  a  good 
head,  but  I  do  not  see  Thanatopsis  in  it."  When  the  father 
was  aware  of  the  misunderstanding,  he  corrected  it,  but  there 
were  for  a  long  time  doubts  whether  a  boy  could  have 


BRYANT'S   HOME,    ROSLYN,   L.  I. 


WILLIAM   CULLEN   BRYANT  141 

written  a  poem  of  this  rank.  In  middle  age  the  poet  wrote 
the  following  to  answer  a  question  in  regard  to  the  time  of 
the  composition  of  Thanatopsis  : — 

"It  was  written  when  I  was  seventeen  or  eighteen  years  old  —  I 
have  not  now  at  hand  the  memorandums  which  would  enable  me  to  be 
precise  —  and  I  believe  it  was  composed  in  my  solitary  rambles  in  the 
woods.  As  it  was  first  committed  to  paper,  it  began  with  the  half 
line  —  <  Yet  a  few  days,  and  thee'  —  and  ended  with  the  beginning  of 
another  line  with  the  words — 'And  make  their  bed  with  thee.'  The 
rest  of  the  poem — the  introduction  and  the  close — was  added  some 
years  afterward,  in  1821." 

Thanatopsis  remains  to-day  Bryant's  most  famous  pro 
duction.  It  is  a  stately  poem  upon  death,  and  seems  to 
come  directly  from  the  lips  of  Nature  :  — 

"...  from  all  around  — 
Earth  and  her  waters  and  the  depth  of  air  — 
Comes  a  still  voice.  — 

Yet  a  few  days,  and  thee 
The  all-beholding  sun  shall  se^  no  more.  .  .  " 

No  other  poem  presents  "  all-including  death"  on  a  scale  of 
such  vastness.  The  majestic  solemnity  of  the  poem  and 
the  fine  quality  of  its  blank  verse  may  be  felt  in  this 
selection :  — 

"...  The  hills 

Rock-ribbed  and  ancient  as  the  sun,  —  the  vales 
Stretching  in  pensive  quietness  between ; 
The  venerable  woods  —  rivers  that  move 
In  majesty,  and  the  complaining  brocks 
That  make  the  meadows  green  ;  and,  poured  round  all, 
Old  Ocean's  gray  and  melancholy  waste, — 
Are  but  the  solemn  decorations  all 
Of  the  great  tomb  of  man." 

Thanatopsis  shows  the  old  Puritan  tendency  to  brood  on 
death,  but  the  Inscription  for  Entrance  to  a  Wood,  written 


142  THE   NEW  YORK   GROUP 

in  1815  and  published  in  the  same  number  of  The  North 
American  Review  as  his  first  great  poem,  takes  us  where 

"...  the  thick  roof 
Of  green  and  stirring  branches  is  alive 
And  musical  with  birds." 

The  gladness  of  the  soft  winds,  the  blue  sky,  the  rivulet, 
the  mossy  rocks,  the  cleft-born  wild-flower,  the  squirrels, 
and  the  insects,  —  all  focus  our  attention  on  the  "  deep 
content "  to  be  found  in  "  the  haunts  of  Nature,"  and 
suggest  Wordsworth's  philosophy  of  the  conscious  enjoy 
ment  of  the  flower,  the  grass,  the  mountains,  the  bird,  and 
the  stream,  voicing  their  "thousand  blended  notes." 

We  may  say  of  Bryant  what  was  true  of  Cooper,  that 
when  he  enters  a  forest,  power  seems  to  come  unbidden 
to  his  pen.  Bryant's  Forest  Hymn  (1825)  finds  God  in 
those  green  temples  :  — 

"  Thou  art  in  the  soft  winds 
That  run  along  the  summit  of  these  trees 
In  music." 

He  points  out  the  divinity  that  shapes  our  ends  in:  — 

"  That  delicate  forest  flower, 
With  scented  breath  and  look  so  like  a  smile." 

No  Puritan  up  to  this  time  had  represented  God  in  a  guise 
more  pleasing  than  the  smile  of  a  forest  flower.  This  en 
tire  Hymn  seems  like  a  great  prayer  rooted  deep  in  those 
earlier  prayers  to  which  the  boy  used  to  listen. 

Although  Bryant  lived  to  be  eighty-four,  he  wrote  less 
poetry  than  Keats,  who  died  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  and 
about  one  third  as  much  as  Shelley,  who  was  scarcely  thirty 
when  he  was  drowned.  It  is  not  length  of  days  that  makes 
a  poet.  Had  Bryant  died  in  his  thirtieth  year,  his  ex 
cellence  and  limitations  would  be  fairly  well  shown  in  his 


WILLIAM   CULLEN  BRYANT 


143 


work  finished  at  that  time.  At  this  age,  in  addition  to  the 
five  poems  in  his  1821  volume  (p.  139),  he  had  written 
The  Winter  Piece,  A  Forest  Hymn,  and  The  Death  of  the 
Flowers.  These  and  a  number  of  other  poems,  written 
before  he  had  finished  his  thirtieth  year,  would  have  en 
titled  him  to  approximately  the  same  rank  that  he  now 
holds  in  the  history  of  American  poetry.  It  is  true  that  if 
he  had  then  passed  away,  we  should  have  missed  his  ex 
quisite  call  to  The  Evening  Wind  (i%2C)\  and  'some  of  his 
other  fine  productions,  such  as  To  the  Fringed  Gentian 
(1829),  The  Prairies  (1832),  The  Battle-Field  (1837),  with 
its  lines  which  are  a  keynote  to  Bryant's  thought  and 
action  :  — 

"  Truth,  crushed  to  earth,  shall  rise  again, 
Th'  eternal  years  of  God  are  hers." 


We  are  thankful  for  the  ideals  voiced  in  The 
and  we  listen  respectfully  to  The  Flood  of  Years  (1876), 
as  the  final  utterance  of  a  poet  who  has  had  the  experience 
of  fourscore  years. 

General  Characteristics.  —  Bryant  is  the  first  great  Ameri 
can  poet.  His  poetry  is  chiefly  reflective  and  descriptive, 
and  it  is  remarkable  for  its  elevation,  simplicity,  and  moral 
earnestness,  lie  lacks  dramatic  power  and  skill  in  narra 
tion.  Calmness  and  restraint,  the  lack  of  emotional  inten 
sity,  are  also  evident  in  his  greatest  work.  His  depths 
of  space  are  vast,  but  windless.  In  The  Poet  he  says  that 
verse  should  embody  :  — 

"...  feelings  of  calm  power  and  mighty  sweep, 
Like  currents  journeying  through  the  windless  deep." 

His  chosen  field  is  describing  and  interpreting  nature. 
He  has  been  called  an  American  Wordsworth.  In  the 
following  lines  Bryant  gives  poetic  expression  to  his  feel- 


144 


THE  NEW  YORK   GROUP 


ing  that  a  certain  maiden's  heart  and  face  reflected  the 
beauty  of  the  natural  scenes  amid  which  she  was  reared :  — 

"...  all  the  beauty  of  the  place 
Is  in  thy  heart  and  on  thy  face. 
The  twilight  of  the  trees  and  rocks 
Is  in  the  light  shade  of  thy  locks."  * 

With  these  lines  compare  Wordsworth's  Three  Years  She 
Grew  in  Sun  arid  Shower  ( 1 799) :  — 

"...  she  shall  lean  her  ear 

In  many  a  secret  place 
Where  rivulets  dance  their  wayward  round, 
And  beauty  born  of  murmuring  sound 

Shall  pass  into  her  face." 

Bryant  himself  says  that  under  the  influence  of  Words 
worth,  nature  suddenly  changed  "into  a  strange  freshness 
and  life."  It  is  no  discredit  to  him  -to  have  been  Words 
worth's  pupil  or  to  have  failed  to  equal  the  magic  of  Eng 
land's  greatest  poet  of  nature. 

Bryant's  range  was  narrow  for  a  great  poet,  and  his 
later  verse  usually  repeated  his  earlier  successes.  As  a 
rule,  he  presented  the  sky,  forest,  flower,  stream,  animal, 
and  the  composite  landscape,  only  as  they  served  to  illu 
mine  the  eternal  verities,  and  the  one  verity  toward  which 
nature  most  frequently  pointed  was  death.  His  heart,  un 
like  Wordsworth's,  did  not  dance  with  the  daffodils  waving 
in  the  breeze,  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  the  dancing. 

The  blank  verse  of  his  Thanatopsis  has  not  been  sur 
passed  since  Milton.  In  everything  that  he  did,  Bryant 
was  a  careful  workman.  Painters  have  noticed  his  skill 
in  the  use  of  his  poetic  canvas  and  his  power  to  suggest 
subjects  to  them,  such  as:  — 

1  "O  Fairest  of  the  Rural  Maids."  (1820.) 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE  OF  THE  PERIOD  145 

*< .  .  .  croft  and  garden  and  orchard, 
That  bask  in  the  mellow  light." 

Three  vistas  from  To  a  Waterfowl,  —  "  the  plashy  brink  of 
weedy  lake,"  "marge  of  river  wide,"  and  "the  chafed 
ocean  side,"  —  long  ago  furnished  the  suggestion  for  three 
paintings. 

Bryant's  Puritan  ancestry  and  training  laid  a  heavy 
hand  upon  him.  Thoughts  of  "the  last  bitter  hour"  are 
constantly  recurring  in  his  verse.  The  third  line  of  even 
his  poem  June  brings  us  to  the  grave.  His  great  poems 
are  often  like  a  prayer  accompanied  by  the  subdued  tones 
of  a  mighty  organ.  Nothing  foul  or  ignoble  can  be  found 
in  his  verse.  He  has  the  lofty  ideals  of  the  Puritans. 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE   OF  THE   PERIOD 

As  we  saw  in  the  preceding  chapter,  Wordsworth  and 
Coleridge  at  the  close  of  the  last  century  began  to  exert 
a  new  influence  on  literature.  Wordsworth's  new  philoso 
phy  of  nature  (p.  99)  can  be  traced  in  the  work  of  Bryant, 
The  other  poets  of  this  age  belong  to  the  romantic  school. 
Byron  (1788-1824),  the  poet  of  revolt  against  the  former 
world,  shows  the  same  influences  that  manifest  themselves 
in  the  American  and  the  French  Revolution.  He  voices 
the  complaints,  and,  to  some  extent,  the  aspirations  of  Eu 
rope.  He  shows  his  influence  in  Fitz-Greene  Halleck's 
Marco  Bozzaris.  Shelley,  who  also  belongs  to  the  school 
of  revolt,  has  a  peculiar  position  as  a  poet  of  ethereal,  eva 
nescent,  and  spirit-like  beauty.  He  is  heard  in  the  voice 
of  the  West  Wind,  the  Cloud,  the  unseen  Skylark,  the 
"Spirit  of  Night,"  and  "the  white  radiance  of  Eternity." 
Bryant's  call  in  The  Evening  Wind{\&2QJ)  to 


146  THE  NEW  YORK   GROUP 

"...  rouse 
The  wide  old  wood  from  his  majestic  rest, 

Summoning  from  the  innumerable  boughs 
The  strange,  deep  harmonies  that  haunt  his  breast," 

may  even  have  been  suggested  by  Shelley's  Ode  to  the  West 


"  Make  me  thy  lyre,  even  as  the  forest  is  : 

What  if  my  leaves  are  falling  like  its  own? 
The  tumult  of  thy  mighty  harmonies 

Will  take  from  both  a  deep  autumnal  tone.1' 

In  the  early  part  of  this  period,  Wordsworth  and  Shelley 
were  both  making  these  harmonies  of  nature  audible  to 
ears  which  had  hitherto  not  heard  them.  Keats  (1795- 
1821)  is  the  poet  of  beauty,  and  he  makes  more  of  an  ap 
peal  to  the  senses  than  Shelley.  The  favorite  creed  of 

Keats  was  :  — 

"  A  thing  of  beauty  is  a  joy  forever." 

His  influence  will  gradually  extend  to  later  American 
verse. 

Sir  Walter  Scott  was  the  great  prose  writer  of  the  age 
preceding  the  Victorian.  The  first  of  his  series  of  Waver- 
/^novels  was  published  in  1814,  and  he  continued  until 
his  death  in  1832  to  delight  the  world  with  his  genius  as 
a  writer  of  romances.  His  influence  may  be  traced  in 
Cooper's  work,  although  the  American  author  occupies  an 
original  field.  Readers  are  still  charmed  with  the  ex 
quisite  flavor  and  humor  in  the  essays  of  Charles  Lamb 
(1775-1834).  The  essays  of  De  Quincey  (1785-1859) 
are  remarkable  for  precision,  stateliness,  and  harmony. 

LEADING   HISTORICAL   FACTS,  1809-1849. 

During  these  forty  years,  the  facts  most  important  for 
the  student  of  literature  are  connected  with  the  expansion 


LEADING  HISTORICAL  FACTS  147 

and  social  ideals  of  the  country.  Progress  was  specially 
manifest  in  two  ways :  in  "  the  manufacture  of  farms  " 
and  in  the  introduction  and  use  of  steam.  At  the  time 
of  the  inauguration  of  Washington  in  1 789,  the  center  of 
population  of  the  entire  country  was  thirty  miles  east  of 
Baltimore.  The  progress  of  settlements  westward,  which 
had  already  begun  in  the  last  period,  became  in  an  increas 
ing  degree  one  of  the  remarkable  events  in  the  history  of 
the  world. 

We  may  observe  that  the  second  war  with  England 
(1812)  resulted  in  welding  the  Union  more  closely  together 
and  in  giving  it  more  prestige  abroad.  We  should  next 
note  the  unparalleled  material  development  of  the  country ; 
the  opening  of  the  Erie  Canal  in  1825,  the  rapid  extension 
of  steamboats  on  rivers,  the  trial  of  the  first  steam  locomo 
tive  in  1828,  the  increased  westward  movement  of  popula 
tion,  which  reached  California  in  1849,  several  hundred 
years  ahead  of  schedule  time,  as  those  thought  who  proph 
esied  before  the  introduction  of  steam.  The  story  of 
the  material  progress  of  the  country  sounds  like  a  new 
Arabian  Nights'  Tale. 

The  administration  of  Andrew  Jackson  (1829-1837)  is 
really  the  beginning  of  the  modern  history  of  the  United 
States.  The  change  during  these  years  was  due  more  to 
steam  than  to  any  other  single  cause.  At  the  beginning  of 
his  administration,  there  were  no  steam  railroads,  but  fifteen 
hundred  miles  were  in  operation  before  the  end  of  his 
second  term.  His  predecessor  in  the  presidential  chair 
was  John  Quincy  Adams,  a  Harvard  graduate  and  an 
aristocrat.  Jackson  was  illiterate,  a  man  of  the  people, 
There  was  an  extension  of  the  social  democratic  feel 
ing. 

All  classes,  the  poor  as  well  as  the  rieh,  spoke  their 


I48  THE  NEW  YORK   GROUP 

minds  more  freely  on  every  subject.  Even  Jackson  s  mes 
sages  relating  to  foreign  nations  were  sometimes  not 
couched  in  very  diplomatic  terms.  Every  one  felt  that  he 
was  as  good  as  anybody  else,  and  in  the  new  settlements  all 
mingled  on  terms  of  equality.  When  Cooper  came  back  to 
the  United  States  in  1833,  after  an  absence  of  six  years  in 
Europe,  he  found  that  he  had  returned  to  a  new  country, 
where  "  everybody  was  everywhere,"  and  nobody  was  any 
where,  and  where  the  chase  for  the  dollar  seemed  to  have 
grown  more  absorbing  than  ever  before. 

Slavery  had  become  one  of  the  leading  questions  of  the 
day.  To  keep  the  balance  between  the  North  and  the 
South,  states  were  often  admitted  in  pairs,  one  free  and 
one  slave  state.  In  1845  there  were  in  the  Union  thirteen 
free  and  fourteen  slave  states.  The  decade  between  1840 
and  1850  witnessed  the  war  with  Mexico  and  the  acquisition 
from  her  of  our  vast  southwestern  territory,  —  Texas,  Cali 
fornia,  Utah,  Nevada,  Arizona,  New  Mexico,  and  some  in 
terior  lands  to  the  north  of  these.  The  South  was  chiefly 
instrumental  in  bringing  about  this  extension  of  our 
boundaries,  hoping  that  this  additional  territory  would  be 
open  for  the  employment  of  slaves  and  would  tend  to 
make  more  nearly  even  the  influence  of  each  section  in  the 
national  government. 

SUMMARY 

With  the  publication  of  Irving' s  Knickerbockers  History 
of  New  York  in  1809,  the  literary  center  of  the  United 
States  shifted  to  New  York,  then  the  second  city  in  the 
country.  Drake  and  Halleck,  two  minor  poets,  calling 
themselves  "  The  Croakers,"  issued  a  series  of  poems  with 
the  principal  object  of  entertaining  readers.  Drake  wrote 
a  fine  romantic  poem  called  The  Culprit  Fay.  Halleck's 


SUMMARY  149 

best  works  are  the  poems  on  the  death  of  Drake  and 
Marco  Boszaris. 

Washington  Irving's  chief  fame  is  based  on  his  original 
creation  of  the  "  Knickerbocker  Legend  "  in  his  History  of 
New  York,  Rip  Van  Winkle,  and  The  Legend  of  Sleepy 
Hollow.  He  is  an  unusually  successful  writer  of  short 
stories,  of  essays  like  those  in  Addison's  Spectator,  and  of 
popular  history  and  biography.  He  is  the  first  American 
writer  whose  works  are  still  read  for  pure  pleasure.  Humor 
and  restrained  sentiment  are  two  of  his  pronounced  quali 
ties.  While  the  subject  matter  of  his  best  work  is  romantic, 
in  his  treatment  of  that  matter  he  shows  the  restraint  of 
the  classical  school.  His  style  is  simple  and  easy-flowing 
but  not  remarkable  for  vigor. 

James  Fenimore  Cooper's  Leatherstocking  Tales  recreate 
in  a  romantic  way  the  life  of  the  pioneer  in  the  forest  and 
the  wilderness.  The  Indian  figures  more  largely  in  these 
Tales  than  in  those  of  any  preceding  writer.  Leatherstock 
ing  deserves  a  place  in  the  w.orld's  temple  of  fame  as  a  great 
original  character  in  fiction.  Cooper  is  also  our  greatest 
writer  of  stories  of  the  sea.  The  Pilot  and  The  Red  Rover 
still  fascinate  readers  with  the  magic  of  the  ocean.  The 
scenes  of  all  of  his  best  stories  are  laid  out  of  doors.  His- 
style  is  often  careless,  and  he  sometimes  does  not  take  the 
trouble  to  correct  positive  errors,  but  his  power  of  arous 
ing  interest  is  so  great  that  these  are  seldom  noticed.  His- 
romances  are  pure,  and  they  inspire  a  love  for  what  is  noble 
and  manly.  Irving  was  almost  as  popular  in  England  as 
in  the  United  States,  but  Cooper  was  the  first  American 
author  to  be  read  widely  throughout  Europe. 

William  Cullen  Bryant  is  the  first  great  American  poet. 
He  belongs  to  Wordsworth's  school  of  nature  poets. 
Bryant's  verse,  chiefly  reflective  and  descriptive,  is  char- 


150  THE  NEW  YORK  GROUP 

acterized  by  elevation,  simplicity,  and  moral  earnestness. 
His  range  is  narrow.  His  communion  with  nature  often 
leads  him  to  the  grave,  but  no  other  American  poet  invests 
it  with  as  much  majesty  as  is  found  in  Thanatopsis.  His 
strict  Puritan  training  causes  him  to  present  the  eternal 
verities  in  his  poetry.  Unlike  Irving,  Cooper,  and  the 
minor  writers,  his  object  is  not  entertainment. 

The  influence  of  steam,  the  more  rapid  emigration  west 
ward,  the  increase  of  the  democratic  spirit,  and  the  begin 
ning  of  the  modern  era  with  its  strenuous  materialistic 
trend  in  the  administration  of  Andrew  Jackson  marked  a 
great  change  in  the  development  of  the  nation.  The  tak 
ing  of  our  vast  southwest  territory  from  Mexico  was  an 
event  second  only  in  importance  to  the  Louisiana  Pur 
chase. 

REFERENCES   FOR   FURTHER   STUDY 
HISTORICAL 

In  addition  to  the  American  and  English  histories  suggested  on  pp. 
60,  61,  the  following  may  be  consulted  :  Burgess's  The  Middle  Period, 
1817-1858;  Coman's  The  Industrial  History  of  the  United  States, 
Chaps.  VI.  and  VII.  ;  Bogart's  Economic  History  of  the  United  States, 
Chap.  XIV ;  Sparks's  The  Expansion  of  the  American  People. 

LITERARY 

Richardson's  American  Literature. 
Trent's  A  History  of  American  Literature. 
Wendell's  History  of  Literature  in  America. 
Stanton's  A  Manual  of  American  Literature. 
Herford's  The  Age  of  Wordsworth. 

Stedman's  Poets  of  America.     (Drake,  Halleck,  Bryant.) 
The    Croakers,   pp.    255-385,    in    The  Poetical  Writings  of  Fits 
Greene  Halleck,  edited  by  James  Grant  Wilson. 
Wilson's  Fitz-Greene  HallecVs  Life  and  Letters 
Irving's,  Pierre  M. :  Life  and  Letters  of  Washington  Irving,  4  vols. 


SUGGESTED  READINGS  151 

Warner's  The  Work  of  Washington  Irving  (60  pages,  excellent). 
Warner's  Washington  Irving (304  pages,  American  Men  of  Letters). 
Payne's  Leading  American  Essayists,  pp.  43-134.     (Irving.) 
Canby's  The  Short  Story  in  English,  pp.  218-226.     (Irving.) 
Lounsbury's  James  Fenimore  Cooper.     (American  Men  of  Letters*, 
excellent.) 

Clymer's  James  Fenimore  Cooper.     (Beacon  Biographies.} 
Brownell's  American  Prose  Masters.     (Cooper.) 
LYskine's  Leading  American  Novelists,  pp.  51-129.     (Cooper.) 
Cooper's  Last  of  the  Mohicans,  edited  with  Introduction  by  Hal- 
leek. 

Godwin's  A  Biography  of   William  Cullen  Bryant,  with  Extracts 
from  his  Private  Correspondence,  2  vols.    (The  standard  authority.) 
Godwin's  The  Poetical  Works  of  William  Cullen  Bryant,  2  vols. 
Bigelow7s  William  Cullen  Bryant.     (American  Men  of  Letters.} 
Bradley 's  William  Cullen  Bryant.    (English  Men  of  Letters,  Ameri 
can  Series} 

Chad  wick's  The  Origin  of  a  Great  Poem  (Thanatopsis),  Harper's 
Magazine,  September,  1894. 


SUGGESTED   READINGS 

Minor  Writers.  —  The  Croakers,  in  Wilson's  edition  of  Halleck's 
Poetical  Writings. 

Selections  from  the  poetry  of  Drake  and  Halleck  may  be  found  in 
Stedman's  American  Anthology,  pp.  36-47,  and  in  S.  &  H.,  Vol.  V. 

Irving.  —  His  Knickerbocker's  History  of  New  York  begins  with 
somewhat  tiresome  matter,  condensed  from  chapters  which  he  and  his 
brother  had  jointly  written  on  a  different  plan.  The  first  part  may 
well  be  omitted,  but  Books  III.,  V.,  VI.,  VII.  should  at  least  be  read. 

Read  his  best  two  short  stories,  Rip  Van  Winkle  and  The  Legend 
of  Sleepy  Hollow.  Lovers  of  Irving  will  also  wish  to  read  some  tales 
from  The  Alhambra,  and  some  of  his  essays :  e.g.  Westminster  Abbey 
and  Stratford-on-Avon.  For  selections  from  his  various  works,  see 
Carpenter,  124-134;  S.  &  H.,  V.,  41-62. 

Cooper. — -One  of  his  Leather  stocking  Tales  (p.  131),  e.g.  The  Last 
of  the  Mohicans,  which  is  deservedly  the  most  popular,  should  be  read. 
If  a  tale  of  the  sea  is  desired,  read  either  The  Pilot  or  The  Red  Rover. 
Selections  may  be  found  in  Carpenter,  124-134;  S.  &  H.,  V.,  138-183. 


152 


THE  NEW  YORK   GROUP 


Bryant.  —  Read  Thanatopsis,  To  a  Waterfowl,  O  Fairest  of  the 
Rural  Maids,  A  Forest  Hymn,  The  Death  of  the  Flowers,  The  Even 
ing  Wind,  To  the  Fringed  Gentian,  and  The  Poet.  All  of  these  are 
accessible  in  Bryant's  poetical  works,  and  almost  all  may  be  found  in 
Page's  The  Chief  American  Poets.  Selections  are  given  in  Stedman's 
American  Anthology;  S.  &  H.,Vol.  V.;  and  Long's  American  Poems, 
1776-1900. 

QUESTIONS   AND    SUGGESTIONS 

What  are  some  of  the  chief  qualities  in  the  poetry  of  "  The  Croak 
ers"?  What  do  these  qualities  indicate  in  the  readers  of  contemporary 
New  York?  Do  you  find  a  genuine  romantic  element  in  Drake's  Cul 
prit  Fay  f  Compare  Halleck's  Marco  Bozzaris  with  his  lines  on  the 
death  of  Drake,  and  give  reasons  for  your  preference. 

Select  what  you  consider  the  best  three  specimens  of  humor  in 
Irving's  Knickerbocker's  History  of  New  York.  How  is  the  humorous 
effect  secured?  Why  does  it  not  make  us  dislike  the  Dutch?  Why  is 
this  History  an  original  work  ?  Why  have  Rip  Van  Winkle  and  The 
Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow  been  such  general  favorites?  Compare  these 
with  any  of  Addison's  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  Papers  and  with  any 
modern  short  story.  Is  Irving  a  romantic  writer?  Compare  his  style 
with  Addison's  and  with  Goldsmith's  in  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield. 

Why  does  Cooper  deserve  to  rank  as  an  original  American  author? 
What  is  his  chosen  field?  In  what  does  his  special  power  consist? 
Who  before  him  made  use  of  the  Indian  in  literature?  Can  you  find 
any  point  of  similarity  between  his  work  and  The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hol 
low?  What  are  the  most  striking  points  of  dissimilarity?  How  does 
his  use  of  the  romantic  element  differ  from  Irving's?  What  blemishes 
have  you  actually  noticed  in  Cooper  ? 

What  lines  in  Bryant's  Thanatopsis  are  the  keynote  of  the  entire 
poem?  What  are  its  general  qualities?  What  are  the  finest  thoughts 
in  A  Forest  Hymn  ?  What  do  these  suggest  in  regard  to  Bryant's  early 
training  and  the  cast  of  his  mind?  Of  all  Bryant's  poems  indicated  for 
reading,  which  do  you  prefer?  Which  of  his  references  to  nature  do 
you  like  best?  Compare  his  poem:  O  fairest  of  the  rural  maids  I 
with  Wordsworth's :  Three  years  she  grew  in  sun  and  shower.  In 
Bryant's  The  Poet,  what  noteworthy  poetical  ideals  do  you  find  f 


CHAPTER   IV 
THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

Change  in  Religious  Thought  —  Since  the  death  of 
Jonathan  Edwards  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  cen 
tury,  New  England  had  done  little  to  sustain  her  former 
literary  reputation.  As  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  approaches,  however,  we  shall  find  a  remarkable  group 
of  writers  in  Boston  and  its  vicinity.  The  causes  of  this 
wonderful  literary  awakening  are  in  some  respects  similar 
to  those  which  produced  the  Elizabethan  age.  In  the 
sixteenth  century  the  Reformation  and  the  Revival  of 
Learning  exerted  their  joint  force  on  England.  In  the 
nineteenth  century,  New  England  also  had  its  religious 
reformation  and  intellectual  awakening.  We  must  remem 
ber  that  "  re-formation  "  strictly  means  "  forming  again  " 
or  "forming  in  a  different  way."  It  is  not  the  province  of 
a  history  of  literature  to  state  whether  a  change  in  religious 
belief  is  for  the  better  or  the  worse,  but  it  is  necessary  to 
ascertain  how  such  a  change  affects  literature. 

The  old  Puritan  religion  taught  the  total  depravity  of 
man,  the  eternal  damnation  of  the  overwhelming  majority, 
of  all  but  the  "  elect."  A  man's  election  to  salvation 
depended  on  God's  foreordination.  If  the  man  was  not 
elected,  he  was  justly  treated,  for  he  merely  received  his 
deserts.  Even  Jonathan  Edwards,  in  spite  of  his  sweet 
nature,  felt  bound  to  preach  hell  fire  in  terms  of  the  old 
Puritan  theology.  In  one  of  his  sermons,  he  says:  — 


154          THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

"  The  God  that  holds  you  over  the  pit  of  hell,  much  as  one  holds  a 
spider,  or  some  loathsome  insect,  over  the  fire,  abhors  you,  and  is  dread 
fully  provoked ;  his  wrath  toward  you  burns  like  fire ;  he  looks  upon 
you  as  worthy  of  nothing  else  but  to  be  cast  into  the  fire." 

This  quotation  was  not  given  when  we  discussed  the  works 
of  Edwards,  because  it  misrepresents  his  most  often  recur 
ring  idea  of  God.  But  the  fact  that  even  he  felt  impelled 
to  preach  such  a  sermon  shows  most  emphatically  that 
Puritan  theology  exerted  its  influence  by  presenting  more 
vivid  pictures  of  God's  wrath  than  of  his  love. 

A  tremendous  reaction  from  such  beliefs  came  in  the 
first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century.  William  Ellery 
Charming  (1780-1 842),  pastor  of  the  Federal  Street  Church 
in  Boston  and  one  of  the  greatest  leaders  of  this  religious 
reform,  wrote  in  1809  of  the  old  Puritan  creed:  — 

11  A  man  of  plain  sense,  whose  spirit  has  not  been  broken  to  this 
creed  by  education  or  terror,  will  think  that  it  is  not  necessary  for  us  to 
travel  to  heathen  countries,  to  learn  how  mournfully  the  human  mind 
may  misrepresent  the  Deity." 

He  maintained  that  human  nature,  made  in  the  image 
of  God,  is  not  totally  depraved,  that  the  current  doctrine 
of  original  sin,  election,  and  eternal  punishment  "  misrepre 
sents  the  Deity  "  and  makes  him  a  monster.  This  view 
was  speedily  adopted  by  the  majority  of  cultivated  people 
in  and  around  Boston.  The  Unitarian  movement  rapidly 
developed  and  soon  became  dominant  at  Harvard  College. 
Unitarianism  was  embraced  by  the  majority  of  Congrega 
tional  churches  in  Boston,  including  the  First  Church,  and 
the  Second  Church,  where  the  great  John  Cotton  (see 
p.  14.)  and  Cotton  Mather  (p.  46.)  had  preached  the  stern 
est  Puritan  theology.  Nearly  all  of  the  prominent  writers 
mentioned  in  this  chapter  adopted  liberal  religious  views. 
The  recoil  had  been  violent,  and  in  the  long  run  recoil  will 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  RENAISSANCE  155 

usually  be  found  proportional  to  the  strength  of  the  re 
pression.  Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  even  called  the  old 
theology  largely  "  diabology."  The  name  of  one  of  his 
poems  is  Homesick  in  Heaven.  Had  he  in  the  early  days 
chosen  such  a  title,  he  would  either,  like  Roger  Williams, 
have  been  exiled,  or,  like  the  Quakers,  have  suffered  a 
worse  fate. 

Many  adopted  more  liberal  religious  beliefs  without  em 
bracing  Unitarianism.  Perhaps  these  three  lines  voice 
most  briefly  the  central  thought  in  man's  new  creed  and 
his  changed  attitude  toward  God  :  — 

"  For  Thou  and  I  are  next  of  kin  ; 
The  pulses  that  are  strong  within, 
From  the  deep  Infinite  heart  begin." 

The  New  England  Renaissance.  —  The  stern  theology  of 
the  Puritans  may  have  been  absolutely  necessary  to  make 
them  work  with  a  singleness  and  an  inflexibility  of  purpose 
to  lay  the  foundations  of  a  mighty  republic  ;  but  this  very 
singleness  of  aim  had  led  to  a  narrowness  of  culture  which 
had  starved  the  emotional  and  aesthetic  nature.  Art, 
music,  literature,  and  the  love  of  beauty  in  general  had 
seemed  reprehensible  because  it  was  thought  that  they 
took  away  the  attention  from  a  matter  of  far  graver  im 
port,  the  salvation  of  the  immortal  soul.  Now  there  gradu 
ally  developed  the  conviction  that  these  agencies  not  only 
helped  to  save  the  soul,  but  made  it  more  worth  saving. 
People  began  to  search  for  the  beautiful  and  to  enjoy  it  in 
both  nature  and  art  Emerson  says  :  — 

"...  if  eyes  were  made  for  seeing, 
Then  Beauty  is  its  own  excuse  for  being." 

The  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  saw  the  New 
Englanders  engaged  in  a  systematic  attempt  at  self-culture, 


156  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

to  an  extent  never  before  witnessed  in  America  and  rarely 
elsewhere.  Many  with  an  income  barely  sufficient  for 
comfortable  living  set  aside  a  fund  for  purchasing  books 
before  anything  else.  Emerson  could  even  write  to  Carlyle 
that  all  the  bright  girls  in  New  England  wanted  something 
better  than  morning  calls  and  evening  parties,  and  that 
a  life  of  mere  trade  did  not  promise  satisfaction  to  the 
boys. 

In  1800  there  were  few  foreign  books  in  Boston,  but  the 
interest  in  them  developed  to  such  an  extent  that  Haw 
thorne's  father-in-law  and  sister-in-law,  Dr.  and  Miss  Pea- 
body,  started  a  foreign  bookstore  and  reading  room. 
Longfellow  made  many  beautiful  translations  from  foreign 
poetry.  In  1840  Emerson  said  that  he  had  read  in  the 
original  fifty-five  volumes  of  Goethe.  Emerson  superin 
tended  the  publication  in  America  of  Carlyle's  early  writ 
ings,  which  together  with  some  of  Coleridge's  works  intro 
duced  many  to  German  philosophy  and  idealism. 

In  this  era,  New  England's  recovery  from  emotional 
and  aesthetic  starvation  was  rapid.  Her  poets  and  prose 
writers  produced  a  literature  in  which  beauty,  power,  and 
knowledge  were  often  combined,  and  they  found  a  culti 
vated  audience  to  furnish  a  welcome. 

The  Transcendental  Philosophy.  —  The  literature  and 
thought  of  New  England  were  profoundly  modified  by  the 
transcendental  philosophy.  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  (p.  178) 
was  the  most  celebrated  expounder  of  this  school  of 
thought.  The  English  philosopher,  Locke,  had  maintained 
that  intellectual  action  is  limited  to  the  world  of  the  senses. 
The  German  metaphysician,  Kant,  claimed  that  the  soul 
has  ideas  which  are  not  due  to  the  activity  of  any  of  the 
senses:  that  every  one  has  an  idea  of  time  and  space 
although  no  one  has  ever  felt,  tasted,  seen,  eaten,  or 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  PHILOSOPHY  157 

smelled  time  or  space.  He  called  such  an  idea  an  intuition 
or  transcendental  form. 

The  student  of  literature  need  not  worry  himself  greatly 
about  the  metaphysical  significance  of  transcendentalism, 
but  he  must  understand  its  influence  on  literary  thought. 
It  is  enough  for  him  to  realize  that  there  are  two  great 
classes  of  fact  confronting  every  human  being.  There 
are  the  ordinary  phenomena  of  life,  which  are  apparent  to 
the  senses  and  which  are  the  only  things  perceived  by  the 
majority  of  human  beings.  But  behind  all  these  appear 
ances  are  forces  and  realities  which  the  senses  do  not 
perceive.  One  with  the  bodily  eye  can  see  the  living  forms 
moving  around  him,  but  not  the  meaning  of  life.  It  is 
something  more  than  the  bodily  hand  that  gropes  in  the 
darkness  and  touches  God's  hand.  To  commune  with  a 
Divine  Power,  we  must  transcend  the  experience  of  the 
senses.  We  are  now  prepared  to  understand  what  a  tran- 
scendentalist  like  Thoreau  means  when  he  says:  — 

"  I  hear  beyond  the  range  of  sound, 
I  see  beyond  the  range  of  sight." 

The  transcendentalists,  therefore,  endeavored  to  transcend, 
that  is,  to  pass  beyond,  the  range  of  human  sense  and  ex 
perience.  We  are  all  in  a  measure  transcendentalists  when 
we  try  to  pierce  the  unseen,  to  explain  existence,  to  build 
a  foundation  of  meaning  under  the  passing  phenomena  of 
life.  To  the  old  Puritan,  the  unseen  was  always  fraught 
with  deeper  meaning  than  the  seen.  Sarah  Pierrepont  and 
Jonathan  Edwards  (p.  51)  were  in  large  measure  transcen 
dentalists.  The  trouble  was  that  the  former  Puritan  phi- 
iosophy  of  the  unseen  was  too  rigid  and  limited  to  satisfy 
the  widening  aspirations  of  the  soul. 

It  should  be  noted  that  in  this  period  the  term  "  tran- 


158          THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

scendentalist "  is  extended  beyond  its  usual  meaning  and 
loosely  applied  to  those  thinkers  who  (i)  preferred  to  rely 
on  their  own  intuitions  rather  than  on  the  authority  of  any 
one,  (2)  exalted  individuality,  (3)  frowned  on  imitation  and 
repetition,  (4)  broke  with  the  past,  (5)  believed  that  a  new 
social  and  spiritual  renaissance  was  necessary  and  forth 
coming,  (6)  insisted  on  the  importance  of  culture,  on  "plain 
living  and  high  thinking,"  and  (7)  loved  isolation  and  soli 
tude.  An  excellent  original  exposition  of  much  of  this 
philosophy  may  be  found  in  Emerson's  Natiire  (1836)  and 
in  his  lecture  on  The  Transcendent  alls  t  (1842). 

The  Ecstasy  of  the  Transcendentalists.  —  Any  age  that 
accomplishes  great  things  is  necessarily  enthusiastic.  Ac 
cording  to  Emerson,  one  of  the  articles  of  the  transcen 
dental  creed  was  a  belief  "in  inspiration  and  ecstasy." 
With  this  went  an  overmastering  consciousness  of  newly 
discovered  power.  "  Do  you  think  me  the  child  of 
circumstances?"  asked  the  transcendentalist,  and  he 
answered  in  almost  the  same  breath,  "  I  make  my 
circumstance." 

The  feeling  of  ecstasy,  due  to  the  belief  that  he  was 
really  a  part  of  an  infinite  Divine  Power,  made  Emerson 
say :  — 

"  I  see  the  spectacle  of  morning  from  the  hill-top  over  against  my 
house,  from  daybreak  to  sunrise,  with  emotions  which  an  angel  might 
share.  The  long  slender  bars  of  cloud  float  like  fishes  in  the  sea  of 
crimson  light.  From  the  earth,  as  a  shore,  I  look  out  into  that  silent 
sea.  I  seem  to  partake  its  rapid  transformations  ;  the  active  enchant 
ment  reaches  my  dust,  and  I  dilate  and  conspire  with  the  morning 
wind." 

The  greatest  of  the  women  transcendentalists,  Margaret 
Fuller  (1810-1850),  a  distinguished  early  pleader  for  equal 
rights  for  her  sex,  believed  that  when  it  was  fashionable 


MARGARET   FULLER  159 

for  women  to  bring  to  the  home  "  food  and  fire  for  the  mind 
as  well  as  for  the  body,"  an  ecstatic  "  harmony  of  the 
spheres  would  ensue." 

To  her,  as  to  Emerson,  Nature  brought  an  inspiring 
message.  On  an  early  May  day  she  wrote  :  — 

"  The  trees  were  still  bare,  but  the  little  birds  care  not  for  that ;  they 
revel  and  carol  and  wildly  tell  their  hopes,  while  the  gentle  voluble  south 
wind  plays  with  the  dry  leaves,  and  the  pine  trees  sigh  with  their  soul- 
like  sounds  for  June.  It  was  beauteous  ;  and  care  and  routine  fled  away, 
and  I  was  as  if  they  had  never  been." 

The  transcendentalist,  while  voicing  his  ecstasy  over  life, 
has  put  himself  on  record  as  not  wishing  to  do  anything 
more  than  once.  For  him 
God  has  enough  new  ex 
periences,  so  that  repeti 
tion  is  unnecessary.  He 
dislikes  routine.  "  Every 
thing,"  Emerson  says, 
"admonishes  us  how  need 
lessly  long  life  is,"  that  is, 
if  we  walk  with  heroes 
and  do  not  repeat.  Let  a 
machine  add  figures  while 
the  soul  moves  on.  He 
dislikes  seeing  any  part 
of  a  universe  that  he  does 
not  use.  Shakespeare 

,  .    .  MARGARET   FULLER 

seemed    to    him    to    have 

lived  a  thousand  years  as  the  guest  of  a  great  universe  in 

which  most  of  us  never  pass  beyond  the  antechamber. 

Critics  were  not  wanting  to  point  out  the  absurdity 
of  many  transcendental  ecstasies.  Amos  Bronson  Alcott 
(1799-1888),  one  of  the  leading  transcendentalists,  wrote 


i6o 


THE   NEW   ENGLAND    GROUP 


a  peculiar  poem  called  The   Seers  Rations,  in  which  he 

speaks  of 

"  Bowls  of  sunrise  for  breakfast, 
Brimful  of  the  East." 

His  neighbors  said  that  this  was  the  diet  which  he  pro 
vided  for  his  hungry  family.     His  daughter,  Louisa  May, 

the  author  of  that  fine  ju 
venile  work,  Little  Women 
(1868),  had  a  sad  struggle 
with  poverty  while  her 
father  was  living  in  the 
clouds.  The  extreme  phi 
losophy  of  the  intangible 
was  soon  called  "transcen 
dental  moonshine."  The 
tenets  of  Bronson  Alcott's* 
transcendental  philosophy 
required  him  to  believe 
that  human  nature  is  satu 
rated  with  divinity.  He 
therefore  felt  that  a  misbe 
having  child  in  school 
would  be  most  powerfully 
affected  by  seeing  the  suf 
fering  which  his  wrongdo 
ing  brought  to  others.  He 
accordingly  used  to  shake 
a  good  child  for  the  bad 
deeds  of  others.  Sometimes  when  the  class  had  offended, 
he  would  inflict  corporal  punishment  on  himself.  His  ex 
treme  applications  of  the  new  principle  show  that  lack  of 
balance  which  many  of  this  school  displayed,  and  yet  his 
reliance  on  sympathy  instead  of  on  the  omnipresent  rod 


AMOS    BRONSON   ALCOTT 


THE  NEW  VIEW  OF  NATURE 


161 


marks  a  step  forward  in  educational  practice.  Emerson 
was  far-seeing  enough  to  say  of  those  who  carried  the  new 
philosophy  to  an  extreme,  "What  if  they  eat  clouds  and 
drink  wind,  they  have  not  been  without  service  to  the  race 
of  man." 

The  New  View  of  Nature.  — To  the  old  Puritan,  nature 
seemed  to  groan  under  the  weight  of  sin  and  to  bear  the 
primal  curse.  To 
the  transcendental- 
ist,  nature  was  a  part 
of  divinity.  The 
question  was  some 
times  asked  whether 
nature  had  any  real 
existence  outside  of 
God,  whether  it  was 
not  God's  thoughts. 
Emerson,  being  an 
idealist,  doubted 
whether  nature  had 
any  more  material  existence  than  a  thought. 

The  majority  of  the  writers  did  not  press  this  idealistic 
conception  of  nature,  but  much  of  the  nature  literature  of 
this  group  shows  a  belief  in  the  soul's  mystic  companion 
ship  with  the  bird,  the  flower,  the  cloud,  the  ocean,  and 
the  stars.  Emerson  says :  — 

"The  greatest  delight  which  the  fields  and  woods  minister  is  the 
suggestion  of  an  occult  relation  between  man  and  the  vegetable.  1  am 
not  alone  and  unacknowledged.  They  nod  to  me,  and  I  to  them." 

Hawthorne  exclaims :  — 

"O,  that  I  could  run  wild!  —  that  is,  that  I  could  put  myself  into  a 
true  relation  with  Nature,  and  be  on  friendly  terms  with  all  congenial 
elements." 


ORCHARD   HOUSE,   HOME  OF  THE  ALCOTTS 


162  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

Thoreau  (p.  194)  often  enters  Nature's  mystic  shrine  and 
dilates  with  a  sense  of  her  companionship.  Of  the  song 
of  the  wood  thrush,  he  says :  — 

"  Whenever  a  man  hears  it,  he  is  young,  and  Nature  is  in  her 
spring.  Whenever  he  hears  it,  it  is  a  new  world  and  a  free  country, 
and  the  gates  of  heaven  are  not  shut  against  him.  ...  It  changes  all 
hours  to  an  eternal  morning.  It  banishes  all  trivialness.  It  reinstates 
me  in  my  dominion,  makes  me  the  lord  of  creation,  is  chief  musician  of 
my  court.  This  minstrel  sings  in  a  time,  a  heroic  age,  with  which  no 
event  in  the  village  can  be  contemporary." 

Thoreau  could  converse  with  the  Concord  River  and  hear 
the  sound  of  the  rain  in  its  "  summer  voice."  Hiawatha 
talked  with  the  reindeer,  the  beaver,  and  the  rabbit,  as  with 
his  brothers.  In  dealing  with  nature,  Whittier  caught  some 
thing  of  Wordsworth's  spirituality,  and  Lowell  was  im 
pressed  with  the  yearnings  of  a  clod  of  earth  as  it 
"  Climbs  to  a  soul  in  grass  and  flowers." 

One  of  the  chief  glories  of  this  age  was  the  fuller  recog 
nition  of  the  companionship  that  man  bears  to  every 
child  of  nature.  This  phase  of  the  literature  has  reacted 
on  the  ideals  of  the  entire  republic.  Flowers,  trees,  birds, 
domestic  animals,  and  helpless  human  beings  have  received 
more  sympathetic  treatment  as  a  result.  In  what  previous 
time  have  we  heard  an  American  poet  ask,  as  Emerson 
did  in  his  poem  Forbearance  (1842)  :  — 

"  Hast  thou  named  all  the  birds  without  a  gun  ? 
Loved  the  wood-rose,  and  left  it  on  its  stalk  ?  " 

The  Dial.  —  Transcendentalism  had  for  its  organ  a 
magazine  called  The  Dial,  which  was  published  quarterly 
for  four  years,  from  1840  to  1844.  Margaret  Fuller,  its 
first  editor,  was  a  woman  of  wide  reading  and  varied  cul 
ture,  and  she  had  all  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Elizabethans. 
Carlyle  said  of  her,  "  Such  a  predetermination  to  eat  this. 


THE   DIAL 


163 


MARGARET   FULLER'S   COTTAGE,    BROOK    FARM 


big  Universe  as  her  oyster  or  her  egg,  and  to  be  absolute 
empress  of  all  height  and  glory  in  it  that  her  heart  could 
conceive,  I  have  not  before  seen  in  any  human  soul." 
She  was  determined  to 
do  her  part  in  usher 
ing  in  a  new  social  and 
spiritual  world,  and  it 
seemed  to  her  that  The 
Dial  would  be  a  mighty 
lever  in  accomplishing 
this  result.  She  strug 
gled  for  two  years  to 
make  the  magazine  a 
success.  Then  ill  health 
and  poverty  compelled  her  to  turn  the  editorship  over  to 
Emerson,  who  continued  the  struggle  for  two  years  longer. 
Some  of  Emerson's  best  pbems  were  first  published  in  The 
Dial,  as  were  his  lecture  on  The  Transcendentalist  and  many 
other  articles  by  him.  Thoreau  wrote  for  almost  every  num 
ber.  Some  of  the  articles  were  dull,  not  a  few  were  vague, 
but  many  were  an  inspiration  to  the  age,  and  their  result 
ant  effect  is  still  felt  in  our  life  and  literature.  Much  of 
the  minor  poetry  was  good  and  stimulating.  William 
Channing  (1818-1901)  published  in  The  Dial  his  Thoughts, 
in  which  we  find  lines  that  might  serve  as  an  epitaph  for  a 
life  approved  by  a  transcendentalist:  — 

"It  flourished  in  pure  willingness  ; 
Discovered  strongest  earnestness ; 
Was  fragrant  for  each  lightest  wind ; 
Was  of  its  own  particular  kind  ;  — 
Nor  knew  a  tone  of  discord  sharp  ; 
Breathed  alway  like  a  silver  harp ; 
And  went  to  immortality." 


164  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

While  turning  the  pages  of  The  Dial,  we  shall  often  meet 
with  sentiments  as  full  of  meaning  to  us  as  to  the  people 
of  that  time.  Among  such  we  may  instance  :  — 

"  Rest  is  not  quitting 
The  busy  career ; 
Rest  is  the  fitting 
Of  self  to  its  sphere." 

Occasionally  we  shall  find  an  expression  fit  to  become  a 
fireside  motto :  — 

"  I  slept,  and  dreamed  that  life  was  beauty ; 
I  woke,  and  found  that  life  was  duty." 

The  prose  in  The  Dial  reflects  the  new  spirit.  .  In  the 
first  volume  we  may  note  such  expressions  of  imaginative 
enthusiasm  as :  — 

"  The  reason  why  Homer  is  to  me  like  dewy  morning  is  because  I  too 
lived  while  Troy  was  and  sailed  in  the  hollow  ships  of  the  Grecians.  .  .  . 
And  Shakespeare  in  King  John  does  but  recall  me  to  myself  in  the  dress 
of  another  age,  the  sport  of  new  accidents.  I,  who  am  Charles,  was 
sometime  Romeo.  In  Hamlet  I  pondered  and  doubted.  We  forget 
that  we  have  been  drugged  with  the  sleepy  bowl  of  the  Present." 

In  the  same  volume  we  find  some  of  Alcott's  famous 
Orphic  Sayings,  of  which  the  following  is  a  sample :  — 

"Engage in  nothing  that  cripples  or  degrades  you.  Your  first  duty 
is  self-culture,  self-exaltation :  you  may  not  violate  this  high  trust. 
Yourself  is  sacred,  profane  it  not.  Forge  no  chains  wherewith  to 
shackle  your  own  members.  Either  subordinate  your  vocation  to  your 
life  or  quit  it  forever." 

A  writer  on  Ideals  of  Every  Day  Life  in  The  Dial  for 
January,  1841,  .suggested  a  thought  that  is  finding  an 
echo  in  the  twentieth  century  :  — 

"  No  one  has  a  right  to  live  merely  to  get  a  living.  And  this  is  what 
is  meant  by  drudgery." 


BROOK   FARM 


Two   lines   in  the  last  volume  voice  the  new  spirit  of 
growth  and  action  :  — 

"  I  am  never  at  anchor,  I  never  shall  be  ; 
I  am  sailing  the  glass  of  infinity's  sea." 

The  Dial  afforded  an  outlet  for  the  enthusiasms,  the 
aspirations,  the  ideals  of  life,  during  a  critical  period  in 
New  England's  renaissance.  No  other  periodical  during 
an  equal  time  has  exerted  more 
influence  on  the  trend  of  Ameri 
can  literature. 

Brook  Farm.  —  In  1841  a  num 
ber  of    people,  headed 
by     George     Ripley 
(1802-1880),    a    Unita 
rian  clergyman,  pur 
chased     a    tract    of 


I 


land  of  about  two 


POOL  AT   BROOK    FARM 


hundred  acres  at  West  Roxbury,  nine  miles  from  Boston. 
This  was  known  as  Brook  Farm,  and  it  became  the  home 
of  a  group  who  wished  to  exemplify  in. real  life  some  of 
the  principles  that  The  Dial  and  other  agencies  of  reform 
were  advocating. 

In  The  Dial  for  January,  1842,  we  may  find  a  statement 
of  the  aims  of  the  Brook  Farm  community.  The  members 
especially  wanted  "  leisure  to  live  in  all  the  faculties  of  the 


166          THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

soul"  and  they  determined  to  combine  manual  and  mental 
labor  in  such  a  way  as  to  achieve  this  result.  Probably  the 
majority  of  Americans  are  in  sympathy  with  such  an  aim. 
Many  have  striven  to  find  sufficient  release  from  their 
hard,  unimproving  routine  work  to  enable  them  to  escape 
its  dwarfing  effects  and  to  live  a  fuller  life  on  a  higher 
plane. 

The  Brook  Farm  settlement  included  such  people  as 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  Charles  A.  Dana  (1819-1897), 
afterward  editor  of  the  New  York  Sun,  George  Ripley,  in 
later  times  distinguished  as  the  literary  critic  of  the  New 
York  Tribune,  and  George  William  Curtis  (1824-1892), 
who  became  a  well-known  essayist,  magazine  editor,  and 
civil  service  reformer.  The  original  pioneers  numbered 
about  twenty ;  but  the  membership  increased  to  nearly  one 
hundred  and  fifty.  Brook  Farm  had  an  influence,  however, 
that  could  not  be  measured  by  the  number  of  its  inmates. 
In  one  year  more  than  four  thousand  visitors  came  to  see 
this  new  social  settlement. 

Hawthorne,  the  most  famous  literary  member  of  the 
Brook  Farm  group,  has  recorded  many  of  his  experiences 
during  his  residence  there  in  1841  :  — 

"  April  13.  I  have  not  yet  taken  my  first  lesson  in  agriculture,  except 
that  I  went  to  see  our  cows  foddered,  yesterday  afternoon.  We  have 
eight  of  our  own ;  and  the  number  is  now  increased  by  a  transcendental 
heifer  belonging  to  Miss  Margaret  Fuller.  She  is  very  fractious,  I  be 
lieve,  and  apt  to  kick  over  the  milk  pail.  .  .  .  April  1 6.  I  have  milked 
a  cow  !!!...  May  3.  The  whole  fraternity  eat  together,  and  such  a 
delectable  way  of  life  has  never  been  seen  on  earth  since  the  days  of 
the  early  Christians.  .  .  .  May  4.  ...  there  is  nothing  so  unseemly 
and  disagreeable  in  this  sort  of  toil  as  you  could  think.  It  defiles  the 
hands,  indeed,  but  not  the  soul." 

Unfortunately,  in  order  to  earn  a  living,  it  was  found 
necessary  to  work  ten  hours  a  day  in  the  summer  time, 


IDEALS  OF  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   AUTHORS  167 

and  this  toil  was  so  fatiguing  that  the  mind  could  not 
work  clearly  at  the  end  of  the  day.  We  find  Hawthorne 
writing  on  June  I  of  the  same  year :  — 

"  It  is  my  opinion  that  a  man's  soul  may  be  buried  and  perish.  .  . 
in  a  furrow  of  the  field,  just  as  well  as  under  a  pile  of  money." 

On  August  12,  he  asks:  — 

"  Is  it  a  praiseworthy  matter  that  I  have  spent  five  golden  months  in 
providing  food  for  cows  and  horses?  It  is  not  so." 

On  Octber  9,  he  says  :  — 

"  Our  household,  being  composed  in  great  measure  of  children  and 
young  people,  is  generally  a  cheerful  one  enough,  even  in  gloomy 
weather.  ...  It  would  be  difficult  to  conceive  beforehand  how  much 
can  be  added  to  the  enjoyment  of  a  household  by  mere  sunniness  of 
temper  and  liveliness  of  disposition.  .  .  ." 

Hawthorne  remained  at  Brook  Farm  for  only  one  of 
the  six  years  of  its  existence.  An  important  building,  on 
which  there  was  no  insurance,  burned  in  1846,  and  the  next 
year  the  association  was  forced  for  financial  reasons  to  dis 
band.  This  was  probably  the  most  ideal  of  a  series  of 
social  settlements,  every  one  of  which  failed.  The  problem 
of  securing  sufficient  leisure  to  live  in  all  the  faculties  of 
the  soul  has  not  yet  been  solved,  but  attempts  toward  a 
satisfactory  solution  have  not  yet  been  abandoned. 

The  influence  of  Brook  Farm  on  our  literature  sur 
vives  in  Hawthorne's  Blithedale  Romance  (p.  219),  in  his 
American  Note  Books,  in  Emerson's  miscellaneous  writings, 
and  in  many  books  and  hundreds  of  articles  by  less  well- 
known  people.  Almost  all  of  those  who  participated  in 
this  social  experiment  spoke  of  it  in  after  years  with  strong 
affection. 

Ideals  of  the  New  England  Authors.  —  When  we  examine 
with  closest  scrutiny  the  lives  of  the  chief  New  England 
authors,  of  Emerson  and  Thoreau,  Longfellow  and  Whittier, 


1 68  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

Holmes  and  Lowell,  we  find  that  all  were  men  of  the  highest 
ideals  and  character.  Not  one  could  be  accused  of  double 
•dealing  and  intentional  misrepresentation,  like  Alexander 
Pope;  not  one  was  intemperate,  like  Robert  Burns  or 
Edgar  Allan  Poe ;  not  one  was  dissolute,  like  Byron  ;  not 
one  uttered  anything  base,  like  many  a  modern  novelist 
and  dramatist. 

The  mission  of  all  the  great  New  England  writers  of 
{his  age  was  to  make  individuals  freer,  more  cultivated, 
more  self-reliant,  more  kindly,  more  spiritual.  Puritan 
energy  and  spirituality  spoke  through  them  all.  Nearly 
all  could  trace  their  descent  from  the  early  Puritans.  It  is 
not  an  infusion  of  new  blood  that  has  given  America  her 
greatest  writers,  but  an  infusion  of  new  ideals.  Some  of 
these  ideals  were  illusions,  but  a  noble  illusion  has  frequently 
led  humanity  upward.  The  transcendentalists  could  not 
fathom  the  unknowable,  but  their  attempts  in  this  direc 
tion  enabled  them  to  penetrate  deeper  into  spiritual 
realities. 

The  New  Englander  demanded  a  cultivated  intellect  as 
the  servant  of  the  spirit.  He  still  looked  at  the  world 
from  the  moral  point  of  view.  For  the  most  part  he  did 
not  aim  to  produce  a  literature  of  pleasure,  but  of  spiritual 
power,  which  he  knew  would  incidentally  bring  pleasure 
of  the  highest  type.  Even  Holmes,  the  genial  humorist, 
wished  to  be  known  to  posterity  by  his  trumpet  call  to  the 
soul  to  build  itself  more  stately  mansions. 

The  Influence  of  Slavery.  --The  question  of  human  slav 
ery  profoundly  modified  the  thought  and  literature  of  the 
nation.  In  these  days  we  often  make  the  mistake  of  think 
ing  that  all  of  the  people  of  New  England  disapproved  of 
slavery  at  the  end  of  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
The  truth  is  that  many  of  the  most  influential  people  in 


HARRIET  BEECHER  STOWE  169 

that  section  agreed  with  the  South  on  the  question  of 
slavery.  Not  a  few  of  the  most  cultivated  people  at  the 
North  thought  that  an  antislavery  movement  would  lead  to 
an  attack  on  other  forms  of  property  and  that  anarchy 
would  be  the  inevitable  result. 

Opposition  to  slavery  developed  naturally  as  a  result  of 
the  new  spirit  in  religion  and  human  philosophy.  This 
distinctly  affirmed  the  right  of  the  individual  to  develop 
free  from  any  trammels.  The  Dial  and  Brook  Farm  were 
both  steps  toward  fuller  individuality  and  more  varied  life, 
and  both  were  really  protests  against  all  kinds  of  slavery. 
This  new  feeling  in  the  air  speedily  passed  beyond  the 
color  line,  and  extended  to  the  animals. 

One  of  the  earliest  to  advocate  the  abolition  of  slavery 
was  William  Lloyd  Garrison  (1805-1879),  a  printer  at 
Newburyport,  Massachusetts.  In  1831  he  founded  The 
Liberator,  which  became  the  official  organ  of  the  New 
England  abolitionists.  He  influenced  the  Quaker  poet 
Whittier  to  devote  the  best  years  of  his  life  to  furthering 
the  cause  of  abolition.  Emerson  and  Thoreau  spoke  for 
cibly  against  slavery.  Lowell  attacked  it  with  his  keenest 
poetic  shafts. 

Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  (1811-1896).  —  It  was,  however, 
left  for  the  daughter  of  an  orthodox  Congregational  clergy 
man  of  New  England  to  surpass  every  other  antislavery 
champion  in  fanning  into  a  flame  the  sentiment  against 
enslaving  human  beings.  Harriet  Beecher,  the  sister  of 
Henry  Ward  Beecher,  the  greatest  pulpit  orator  of  anti- 
slavery  days,  was  born  in  Litchfield,  Connecticut.  When 
she  was  twenty-one,  she  went  with  her  father,  Lyman 
Beecher,  to  Cincinnati.  Her  new  home  was  on  the  border 
land  of  slavery,  and  she  often  saw  fugitive  slaves  and 
heard  their  stories  at  first  hand.  In  1833  she  made  a 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


visit  to  a  slave  plantation  in  Kentucky  and  obtained  addi 
tional  material  for  her  most  noted  work. 

In  1836  she  married  Calvin  E.  Stowe,  a  colleague  of  her 
father  in  the  Lane  Theological  Seminary  in  Cincinnati. 
During  the  next  twelve  years  she  had  six  children  to  rear. 

In  1850  Professor  Stowe 
and  his  family  moved 
to  Bowdoin  College, 
in  Brunswick,  Maine. 
This  year  saw  the  pas 
sage  of  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Act,  which  re 
quired  the  citizens  of 
free  states  to  aid  in 
catching  and  returning 
escaped  slaves.  This 
Act  roused  Mrs.  Stowe, 
and  she  began  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin,  which  was 
published  in  book  form 
in  1852. 

Perhaps  no  other 
American  book  of  note  has  been  written  under  so  great  a 
handicap.  When  Mrs.  Stowe  began  this  work,  one  of  her 
large  family  of  children  was  not  a  year  old,  and  the  others 
were  a  constant  care.  Nevertheless,  she  persevered  with 
her  epoch-making  story.  One  of  her  friends  has  given  us 
a  picture  of  the  difficulties  in  her  way,  the  baby  on  her 
knee,  the  new  hired  girl  asking  whether  the  pork  should 
be  put  on  top  of  the  beans,  and  whether  the  gingerbread 
should  stay  longer  in  the  oven. 

In  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  Mrs.  Stowe  endeavored  to  trans 
late  into  concrete  form  certain  phases  of  the  institution  of 


HARRIET   BEECHER    STOWE 


HARRIET   BEECHER   STOWE  171 

slavery,  which  had  been  merely  an  abstraction  to  the 
North.  Of  Senator  John  Bird,  who  believed  in  stringent 
laws  for  the  apprehension  of  fugitive  slaves,  she  wrote :  — 

"...  his  idea  of  a  fugitive  was  only  an  idea  of  the  letters  that  spell 
the  word,  —  or,  at  the  most,  the  image  of  a  little  newspaper  picture  of 
a  man  with  a  stick  and  bundle,  with  *  Ran  away  from  the  subscriber ' 
under  it.  The  magic  of  the  real  presence  of  distress,  —  the  imploring 
human  eye,  the  frail,  trembling  human  hand,  the  despairing  appeal 
of  helpless  agony,  —  these  he  had  never  tried.  He  had  never  thought 
that  a  fugitive  might  be  a  hapless  mother,  a  defenceless  child.  .  .  ." 

In  chapters  of  intense  dramatic  power,  Mrs.  Stowe 
shows  a  slave  mother  and  her  child  escaping  on  the  float 
ing  ice  across  the  Ohio.  They  come  for  refuge  to  the 
home  of  Senator  Bird. 

" '  Were  you  a  slave  ? '  said  Mr.  Bird. 

"  '  Yes,  sir ;  I  belonged  to  a  man  in  Kentucky.' 

"  *  Was  he  unkind  to  you  ? ' 

"  *  No,  sir ;  he  was  a  good  master.' 

'"And  was  your  mistress  unkind  to  you?' 

"  '  No,  sir,  —  no !  my  mistress  was  always  good  to  me. ' " 

Senator  Bird  learned  that  the  master  and  mistress  were 
in  debt,  and  that  a  creditor  had  a  claim  which  could  be 
discharged  only  by  the  sale  of  the  child.  "Then  it  was," 
said  the  slave  mother,  "  I  took  him  and  left  my  home  and 
came  away." 

Mrs.  Stowe's  knowledge  of  psychological  values  is 
shown  in  the  means  taken  to  make  it  appear  to  Senator 
John  Bird  that  it  would  be  the  natural  thing  for  him  to 
defeat  his  own  law,  by  driving  the  woman  and  her  child 
seven  miles  in  the  dead  of  night  to  a  place  of  greater 
safety. 

All  sections  of  the  country  do  not  agree  in  regard  to 
whether  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  gives  a  fairly  representative 


172  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

picture  of  slavery.  This  is  a  question  for  the  historian,  not 
for  the  literary  critic.  We  study  Macbeth  for  its  psychol 
ogy,  its  revelation  of  human  nature,  its  ethics,  more  than 
for  its  accurate  exposition  of  the  Scottish  history  of  the 
time.  We  read  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  to  find  out  how  the 
pen  of  one  woman  proved  stronger  than  the  fugitive  slave 
laws  of  the  United  States,  how  it  helped  to  render  of  no 
avail  the  decrees  of  the  courts,  and  to  usher  in  a  four  years' 
war.  We  decide  that  she  achieved  this  result  because  the 
pictures,  whether  representative  or  not,  which  she  chose  to 
throw  on  her  screen,  were  such  as  appealed  to  the  most 
elemental  principles  of  human  nature,  such  as  the  mother 
could  not  forget  when  she  heard  her  own  children  say 
their  evening  prayer,  such  as  led  her  to  consent  to  send 
her  firstborn  to  the  war,  such  as  to  make  Uncle  Toms 
Cabin  outsell  every  other  book  written  by  an  American, 
to  cause  it  to  be  translated  into  more  than  thirty  foreign 
languages,  to  lead  a  lady  of  the  Siamese  court  to  free  all 
her  slaves  in  1867,  and  to  say  that  Mrs.  Stowe  "had 
taught  her  as  even  Buddha  had  taught  kings  to  respect 
the  rights  of  her  fellow  creatures." 

It  may  be  noted  in  this  connection  that  Mark  Twain, 
who  was  of  southern  descent  and  whose  parents  and  rela 
tives  owned  slaves,  introduces  in  his  greatest  work,  Huckle 
berry  Finn  (1884),  a  fugitive  slave  to  arouse  our  sympathies. 
The  plot  of  Pudd'nhead  Wilson  (1894)  turns  on  one  of 
Mrs.  Stowe's  points  of  emphasis,  the  fear  of  the  mother 
that  her  child  would  be  sold  and  taken  away  from  her, 
down  the  river. 

The  story  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  is  intensely  dramatic, 
and  it  accomplished  its  author's  purpose  far  beyond  her  ex 
pectations.  When  we  study  it  merely  as  a  literary  per 
formance,  we  shall  notice  the  effect  of  the  handicap  under 


ORATORY  173 

which  Mrs.  Stowe  labored  at  the  time  of  composition,  as 
well  as  her  imperfect  conception  of  the  art  technique  of  the 
modern  novel.  There  are  faults  of  plot,  style,  and  char 
acterization.  Modern  fiction  would  call  for  more  differen 
tiation  in  the  dialogue  of  the  different  characters  and  for 
more  unity  of  structure,  and  yet  there  are  stories  with  all 
these  technical  excellencies  which  do  not  live  a  year.  We 
may  say  with  W.  P.  Trent,  a  Virginian  by  birth,  and  a 
critic  who  has  the  southern  point  of  view :  "  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin  is  alive  with  emotion,  and  the  book  that  is  alive  with 
emotion  after  the  lapse  of  fifty  years  is  a  great  book.  The 
critic  of  to-day  cannot  do  better  than  to  imitate  George 
Sand  when  she  reviewed  the  story  on  its  first  appearance 
—  waive  its  faults  and  affirm  its  almost  unrivaled  emotional 
sincerity  and  strength." 

Oratory. — The  orators  of  .this  period  made  their  strongest 
speeches  on  questions  connected  with  human  liberty  and 
the  preservation  of  the  Union.  Most  public  speeches  die 
with  the  success  or  the  failure  of  the  reforms  that  they 
champion  or  the  causes  that  they  plead.  A  little  more 
than  half  a  century  ago,  schoolboys  declaimed  the  speeches 
of  Edward  Everett  (1794-1865),  Charles  Sumner  (1811- 
1874),  and  Wendell  Phillips  (1811-1884),  all  born  in 
Massachusetts,  and  all  graduates  of  Harvard.  But  even 
the  best  speeches  of  these  men  are  gradually  being  for 
gotten,  although  a  stray  sentence  or  paragraph  may  still 
occasionally  be  heard,  such  as  Wendell  Phillips's  reply 
to  those  who  hissed  his  antislavery  sentiments,  "Truth 
dropped  into  the  pit  of  hell  would  make  a  noise  just  like 
that,"  pr  Edward  Everett's  apostrophe  to  "that  one  solitary 
adventurous  vessel,  the  Mayflower  of  a  forlorn  hope, 
freighted  with  the  prospects  of  a  future  state  and  bound 
across  the  unknown  sea." 


174 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


Daniel  Webster  (1782-1852).  —  New  England  furnished 
in  Daniel  Webster  one  of  the  world's  great  orators.  He 
was  born  in  Salisbury,  New  Hampshire,  and  educated  at 
Dartmouth  College.  It  was  said  half  humorously  that 
no  one  could  really  be  as  great  as  he  looked.  Whittier 

called  him 

"  New  England's  stateliest  type  of  man, 

In  port  and  speech  Olympian ; 
Whom  no  one  met,  at  first,  but  took 
A  second  awed  and  wondering  look." 

Before  his  death  he  was  known  as  the  best  lawyer,  the 

most  noted  statesman,  and 
the  greatest  orator  in  the 
country.  He  is  still  con 
sidered  America's  great 
est  orator. 

A  study  of  the  way  in 
which  Webster  schooled 
himself  to  become  a 
speaker  will  repay  every 
one  who  wishes  to  use  our 
spoken  language  effect 
ively.  In  Webster's  youth, 
a  stilted,  unnatural  style 
was  popular  for  set 
speeches.  He  was  him 
self  influenced  by  the 
find  him  writing  to  a 


DANIEL    WEBSTER 


prevailing 
friend :  — 


fashion,     and     we 


"  In  my  melancholy  moments  I  presage  the  most  dire  calamities.  I 
already  see  in  my  imagination  the  time  when  the  banner  of  civil  war 
shall  be  unfurled ;  when  Discord's  hydra  form  shall  set  up  her  hideous 
yell,  and  from  her  hundred  mouths  shall  howl  destruction  through  our 
empire." 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  175 

Such  unnatural  prose  impresses  us  to-day  as  merely  an 
insincere  play  with  words,  but  in  those  days  many  thought 
a  stilted,  ornate  style  as  necessary  for  an  impressive 
occasion  as  Sunday  clothes  for  church.  An  Oratorical 
Dictionary,  for  the  use  of  public  speakers,  was  actually 
published  in  the  first  part  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
This  contained  a  liberal  amount  of  sonorous  words  derived 
from  the  Latin,  such  as  "campestral,"  "lapidescent,"  "ob 
nubilate,"  and  "  adventitious."  Such  words  were  supposed 
to  give  dignity  to  spoken  utterance. 

Edward  Everett,  the  most  finished  classical  speaker  of 
the  time,  loved  to  introduce  the  "  Muses  of  Hellas,"  and 
to  make  allusions  to  the  fleets  "  of  Tyre,  of  Carthage,  of 
Rome,"  and  to  Hannibal's  slaughtering  the  Romans  "  till 
the  Aufidus  ran  blood."  He  painted  Warren  "  moving 
resplendent  over  the  field  >of  honor,  with  the  rose  of 
Heaven  upon  his  cheek,  and  the  fire  of  liberty  in  his 
eye." 

Webster  was  cured  of  such  tendencies  by  an  older 
lawyer,  Jeremiah  Mason,  who  graduated  at  Yale  about 
the  time  Webster  was  born.  Mason,  who  was  frequently 
Webster's  opponent,  took  pleasure  in  ridiculing  all  ornate 
efforts  and  in  pricking  rhetorical  bubbles.  Webster  says 
that  Mason  talked  to  the  jury  "  in  a  plain  conversational 
way,  in  short  sentences,  and  using  no  word  that  was  not 
level  to  the  comprehension  of  the  least  educated  man  on 
the  panel.  This  led  me  to  examine  my  own  style,  and  I 
set  about  reforming  it  altogether."  Note  the  simplicity  in 
the  following  sentences  from  Webster's  speech  on  The 
Murder  of  Captain  Joseph  White:—* 

"  Deep  sleep  had  fallen  on  the  destined  victim,  and  on  all  beneath 
his  roof.  A  healthful  old  man,  to  whom  sleep  was  sweet,  and  the  first 
sound  slumbers  of  the  night  held  him  in  their  soft  but  strong  em- 


X76  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

brace  -  .  The  face  of  the  innocent  sleeper  is  turned  from  the  mur 
derer,'  and  the  beams  of  the  moon,  resting  on  the  gray  locks  of  his  aged 
temple,  show  him  where  to  strike.1' 

In  his  speech  on  The  Completion  of  the  Bunker  Hill  Monu 
ment,  we  find  the  following  paragraph,  containing  two 
sentences  which  present  in  simple  language  one  of  the 
great  facts  in  human  history  :  — 

'   "America  has  furnished  to  the  world  the  character  of  Washington! 
And  if  our  American  institutions  had  done  nothing  else,  that  aloi 
would  have  entitled  them  to  the  respect  of  mankind.'' 

He  knew  when  illustrations  and  figures  of  rhetoric 
could  be  used  to  advantage  to  impress  his  hearers.  In 
discussing  the  claim  made  by  Senator  Calhoun  of  South 
Carolina  that  a  state  could  nullify  a  national  law,  Webster 
said  :  — 

"  To  begin  with  nullification,  with  the  avowed  intent,  nevertheless, 
not  to  proceed  to  secession,  dismemberment,  and  general  revolution, 
is  as  if  one  were  to  take  the  plunge  of  Niagara,  and  cry  out  that  he 
would  stop  half  way  down." 

To  show  the  moral  bravery  of  our  forefathers  and  the  conv 
parative  greatness  of  England,  at  that  time,  he  said :  - 
"  On  this  question  of  principle,  while  actual  suffering  was  yet  afar  off, 
they  raised  their  flag  against  a  power,  to  which,  for  purposes  of  foreign 
conquest  and  subjugation,  Rome,  in  the  height  of  her  glory,  is  not  to 
be  compared ;  a  power  which  has  dotted  over  the  surface  of  the  whole 
globe  with  her  possessions  and  military  posts,  whose  morning  drum 
beat,  following  the  sun,  and  keeping  company  with  the  hours,  circles 
the  earth  with  one  continuous  and  unbroken  strain  of  the  martial  airs  of 
England." 

For  nearly  a  generation  prior  to  the  Civil  War,  schoolboys 
had  been  declaiming  the  peroration  of  his  greatest  speech, 
his  Reply  to  Hayne  (1830):  - 

"When  my  eyes  shall  be  turned  to  behold  for  the  last  time  the  sun  in 
heaven,  may  I  not  see  him  shining  on  the  broken  and  dishonored  frag- 


DANIEL  WEBSTER  177 

ments  of  a  once  glorious  Union  ;  on  States  dissevered,  discordant, 
belligerent  ;  on  a  land  rent  with  civil  feuds,  or  drenched,  it  may  be,  in 
fraternal  blood!" 

This  peroration  brought  Webster  as  an  invisible  pres 
ence  into  thousands  of  homes  in  the  North.  The  hearts 
of  the  listeners  would  beat  faster  as  the  declaimer  con 
tinued  :  — 

"Let  their  last  feeble  and  lingering  glance  rather  behold  the  gorgeous 
ensign  of  the  republic,  now  known  and  honored  throughout  the  earth, 
still  full  high  advanced,  its  arms  and  trophies  streaming  in  their  original 
luster,  not  a  stripe  erased  or  polluted,  nor  a  single  star  obscured.  .  .  .  " 

When  the  irrepressible  conflict  came,  it  would  be  difficult 
to  estimate  how  many  this  great  oration  influenced  to  join 
the  army  to  save  the  Union.  The  closing  words  of  that 
speech,  "  Liberty  and  Union,  now  and  forever,  one  and  in 
separable  !  "  kept  sounding  like  the  voice  of  many  thunders 
in  the  ear  of  the  young  men,  until  they  shouldered  their 
muskets.  His  Seventh  of  March  Speech  (1850),  which 
seemed  to  the  North  to  make  compromises  with  slavery, 
put  him  under  a  cloud  for  awhile,  but  nothing  could  stop 
youth  from  declaiming  his  Reply  to  Hayne. 

Although  the  majority  of  orators  famous  in  their  day  are 
usually  forgotten  by  the  next  generation,  it  is  not  improb 
able  that  three  American  orations  will  be  quoted  hundreds 
of  years  hence.  So  long  as  the  American  retains  his 
present  characteristics,  we  cannot  imagine  a  time  when  he 
will  forget  Patrick  Henry's  speech  in  1775,  or  Daniel 
Webster's  peroration  in  his  Reply  to  Hayne,  or  Abraham 
Lincoln's  Gettysburg  Address  (p.  344),  entrusting  the  Ameri 
can  people  with  the  task  of  seeing  "  that  government  of  the 
people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the  people  shall  not  perish 
5rom  the  earth." 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


RALPH    WALDO  EMERSON,  1803-1882 

.Life.  —  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  the  most  distinguished  of 
New  England  transcendentalists,  came  from  a  family  of 
clergy.  Peter  Bulkeley,  his  ancestor,  was  the  first  pastor 
of  Concord  in  1635.  William  Emerson,  his  grandfather,  was 
pastor  in  Concord  at  the  opening  of  the  Revolutionary  War 
and  witnessed  the  fight  of  Concord  Bridge  from  the  win 
dow  of  the  Old  Manse,  that  famous  house  which  he  had 
built  and  which  Hawthorne  afterwards  occupied.  By  that 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON 


179 


Bridge  there  stands  a  monument,  commemorating  the  he 
roic  services  of  the  men  who  there  made  the  world-famous 
stand  for  freedom.  On  the  base  of  this  monument  are 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson's  lines:  — 

"  By  the  rude  bridge  that  arched  the  flood, 

Their  flag  to  April's  breeze  unfurled, 
Here  once  the  embattled  farmers  stood, 

And  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world.1' 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  was  born  in  Boston  in  1803, 
His  father,  who  was  pastor  of  the  First  Church  in  Boston, 
died  when  Ralph  Waldo  was  eight  years  old,  leaving  in 
poverty  a  widow  with  six  children  under  ten  years  of  age. 
His  church  promptly  voted  to  pay  his  widow  five  hundred 
dollars  a  year,  for  seven  years,  but  even  with  this  help  the 
family  was  so  poor  that  in  'cold  weather  it  was  noticed  that 
Ralph  and  his  brother  went  to  school  on  alternate  days. 
The  boys  divined  the  reason,  and  were  cruel  enough  to 
call  out,  "Whose  turn  is  it  to  wear  the  coat  to-day?" 
But  the  mother  struggled  heroically  with  poverty,  and 
gave  her  sons  a  good  education.  Ralph  Waldo  entered 
Harvard  in  1817.  He  saved  the  cost  of  his  lodging  by 
being  appointed  "  President's  Freshman,"  as  the  official 
message  bearer  was  called,  and  earned  most  of  his  board 
by  waiting  on  the  table  at  the  college  Commons. 

Emerson  was  descended  from  such  a  long  line  of  clergy 
men  that  it  was  natural  for  him  to  decide  to  be  a  minister. 
After  graduating  at  Harvard  and  taking  a  course  in  theol 
ogy,  he  received  a  call  from  Cotton  Mather's  (p.  46)  church 
and  preached  there  for  a  short  time ;  but  he  soon  resigned 
because  he  could  not  conscientiously  conform  to  some  of 
the  customs  of  the  church.  Although  he  occasionally  oc 
cupied  pulpits  for  a  few  years  after  this,  the  greater  part 


l8o  THE   NEW   ENGLAND    GROUP 

of  his  time  for  the  rest  of  his  life  was  spent  in  writing 
and  lecturing. 

When  he  was  temporarily  preaching  in  Concord,  New 
Hampshire,  in  1827,  he  met  Miss  Ellen  Tucker,  then  six 
teen  years  old.  This  meeting  was  for  two  reasons  a  note 
worthy  event  in  his  life.  In  the  first  place,  her  inspiration 
aided  in  the  development  of  his  poetical  powers.  He 
seemed  to  hear  the  children  of  Nature  say  to  her :  — 

"  Thou  shalt  command  us  all,  — 

April's  cowslip,  summer's  clover, 
To  the  gentian  in  the  fall, 

Blue-eyed  pet  of  blue-eyed  lover.* 

His  verses  tell  how  the  flower  and  leaf  and  berry  and 
rosebud  ripening  into  rose  had  seemed  to  copy  her.  He 

married  her  in  1829  and  wrote 
the  magnificent  prophecy  of 
their  future  happiness  in  the 
poem  beginning :  — 

"And  Ellen,  when  the  graybeard  years," 

a  poem  which  he  could  not  bear 
to  have  published  in  his  lifetime, 
for  Mrs.  Emerson  lived  but  a 
few  years  after  their  marriage. 
In  the  second  place,  in  addi 
tion  to  stimulating  his  poetical 
activity,  his  wife's  help  did  not 
end  with  her  death ;  for  she  left 

ELLEN   TUCKER 

him  a  yearly  income  of  twelve 

hundred  dollars,  without  which  he  might  never  have  se 
cured  the  leisure  necessary  to  enable  him  "  to  live  in  all  the 
faculties  of  his  soul "  and  to  become  famous  in  American 
literature. 


RALPH  WALDO   EMERSON 


181 


In  the  fall  of  1833  he  sailed  for  Europe,  going  by  way 
of  the  Mediterranean.  Returning  by  way  of  England,  he 
met  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  and  Carlyle,  whose  influence 
he  had  already  felt.  His  visit  to  Carlyle  led  to  a  lifelong 
friendship.  Emerson  helped  to  bring  out  an  American 
edition  of  the  Sartor  Resartus  (1836)  before  it  was  pub 
lished  in  England. 

After  returning  from  Europe,  Emerson  permanently 
settled  at  Concord,  Massachusetts,  the  most  famous  literary 


EMERSON'S   STUDY 


town  of  its  size  in  the  United  States.  The  appreciation  of 
the  Concord  people  for  their  home  is  shown  by  the  nafve 
story,  told  by  a  member  of  Emerson's  family,  of  a  fellow 
townsman  who  read  of  the  rapidly  rising  price  of  building 
lots  in  Chicago,  and  remarked,  "Can't  hardly  believe  that 
any  lands  can  be  worth  so  much  money,  so  far  off."  After 


1 82  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

Henry  D.  Thoreau  (p.  194)  had  received  a  medal  at  school 
for  proficiency  in  geography,  he  went  home  and  asked  his 
mother  if  Boston  was  located  in  Concord.  It  was  to  Con 
cord  that  Emerson  brought  his  second  wife,  Lidian  Jackson 
Emerson,  whom  he  married  in  1835.  In  Concord  he  wrote 
his  most  famous  Essays,  and  from  there  he  set  out  on  his 
various  lecturing  tours.  There  he  could  talk  daily  to 
celebrities  like  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  Henry  Thoreau,  and 
Bronson  Alcott.  Louisa  May  Alcott  relates  that  when 
eight  years  old  she  was  sent  to  the  Emerson  home  to  in 
quire  about  the  health  of  his  oldest  son,  a  boy  of  five. 
Emerson  answered  her  knock,  and  replied,  "  Child,  he  is 
dead!"  Years  later  she  wrote,  "I  never  have  forgotten  the 
anguish  that  made  a  familiar  face  so  tragical,  and  gave 
those  few  words  more  pathos  than  the  sweet  lamentation 
of  the  Threnody."  Like  Milton  and  Tennyson,  Emerson 
voiced  his  grief  in  an  elegy,  to  which  he  gave  the  title 
Threnody.  In  this  poem  the  great  teacher  of  optimism 
wrote :  — 

"  For  this  losing  is  true  dying ; 

This  is  lordly  man's  down-lying, 

This  his  slow  but  sure  reclining. 

Star  by  star  his  world  resigning." 

Aside  from  domestic  incidents,  his  life  at  Concord  was 
uneventful.  As  he  was  by  nature  averse  to  contests,  he 
never  took  an  extreme  part  in  the  antislavery  movement, 
although  he  voiced  his  feelings  against  slavery,  even  giving 
antislavery  lectures,  when  he  thought  the  occasion  required 
such  action.  His  gentleness  and  tenderness  were  inborn 
qualities.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  said  that  Emerson  re 
moved  men's  "  idols  from  their  pedestals  so  tenderly  that 
it  seemed  like  an  act  of  worship." 

He  widened  his  influence  by  substituting  the  platform 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON  183 

for  the  pulpit,  and  year  after  year  he  enlarged  his  circle 
of  hearers.  He  lectured  in  New  England,  the  South,  and 
the  West.  Sometimes  these  lecture  tours  kept  him  away 
from  home  the  entire  winter.  In  1847  he  lectured  in  Eng 
land  and  Scotland.  He  visited  Carlyle  again,  and  for  four 
days  listened  to  "the  great  and  constant  stream"  of  his 
talk.  On  this  second  trip  abroad,  Emerson  met  men  like 
De  Quincey,  Macaulay,  Thackeray,  and  Tennyson.  Em 
erson  gained  such  fame  in  the  mother  country  that,  long 
after  he  had  returned,  he  was  nominated  for  the  Lord 
Rectorship  of  Glasgow  University  and  received  five  hun 
dred  votes  against  seven  hundred  for  Disraeli,  one  of  Eng 
land's  best  known  statesmen. 

Something  of  his  character  and  personality  may  be 
learned  from  the  accounts  of  contemporary  writers.  James 
Russell  Lowell,  who  used  to  go  again  and  again  to  hear 
him,  even  when  the  subject  was  familiar,  said,  "We  do 
not  go  to  hear  what  Emerson  says  so  much  as  to  hear 
Emerson."  Hawthorne  wrote,  "It  was  good  to  meet 
him  in  the  wood  paths  or  sometimes  in  our  avenue 
with  that  pure  intellectual  gleam  diffusing  about  his 
presence  like  the  garment  of  a  shining  one."  Carlyle 
speaks  of  seeing  him  "vanish  like  an  angel"  from  his 
lonely  Scotch  home. 

Emerson  died  in  1882  and  was  buried  near  Hawthorne, 
in  Sleepy  Hollow  cemetery  at  Concord,  on  the  "hilltop 
hearsed  with  pines."  Years  before  he  had  said,  "I  have 
scarce  a  daydream  on  which  the  breath  of  the  pines  has 
not  blown  and  their  shadow  waved."  The  pines  divide 
with  an  unhewn  granite  boulder  the  honor  of  being  his 
monument. 

Early  Prose.  —  Before  he  was  thirty-five,  Emerson  had 
produced  some  prose  which,  so  far  as  America  is  con- 


1 84 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


cerned,  might  be  considered  epoch-making  in  two  respects  : 
(i)  in  a  new  philosophy  of  nature,  not  new  to  the  world, 
but  new  in  the  works  of  our  authors  and  fraught  with  new 
inspiration  to  Americans;  and  (2)  in  a  new  doctrine  of 
self-reliance  and  intellectual  independence  for  the  New 
World. 

In  1836  he  published  a  small  volume  entitled  Nattire, 
containing  fewer  than  a  hundred  printed  pages,  but  giving 


EMERSON'S   GRAVE,   CONCORD 

in  embryo  almost  all  the  peculiar,  idealistic  philosophy 
that  he  afterwards  elaborated.  By  "  Nature "  he  some 
times  means  everything  that  is  not  his  own  soul,  but  he 
also  uses  the  word  in  its  common  significance,  and  talks  of 
the  beauty  in  cloud,  river,  forest,  and  flower.  Although 
Nature  is  written  in  prose,  it  is  evident  that  the  author  is  a 
poet.  He  says :  — 

"  How  does  Nature  deify  us  with  a  few  and  cheap  elements !  Give 
me  health  and  a  day,  and  I  will  make  the  pomp  of  emperors  ridiculous. 
The  dawn  is  my  Assyria ;  the  sunset  and  moonrise  my  Paphos,  and 


RALPH  WALDO   EMERSON  185 

unimaginable  realms  of  faerie ;  broad  noon  shall  be  my  England  of  the 
senses  and  the  understanding ;  the  night  shall  be  my  Germany  of  mys 
tic  philosophy  and  dreams." 

Emerson  tried  to  make  men  feel  that  the  beauty  of  the 
universe  is  the  property  of  every  individual,  but  that 
the  many  divest  themselves  of  their  heritage.  When  he 
undertook  to  tell  Americans  how  to  secure  a  warranty 
deed  to  the  beauties  of  nature,  he  specially  emphasized  the 
moral  element  in  the  process.  The  student  who  fails  to 
perceive  that  Emerson  is  one  of  the  great  moral  teachers 
has  studied  him  to  little  purpose.  To  him  all  the  pro 
cesses  of  nature  "hint  or  thunder  to  man  the  laws  of 
right  and  wrong,  and  echo  the  Ten  Commandments."  In 
Nature •,  he  says  :  — 

"  All  things  with  which  we  deal,  preach  to  us.  What  is  a  farm  but  a 
mute  gospel?  The  chaff  and  the  wheat,  weeds  and  plants,  blight,  rain, 
insects,  sun,  —  it  is  a  sacred  emblem  from  the  first  furrow  of  spring  to 
the  last  stack  which  the  snow  of  winter  overtakes  in  the  fields." 

In  Nature,  Emerson  sets  forth  his  idealistic  philosophy. 
"Idealism  sees  the  world  in  God  "  is  with  him  an  axiom. 
This  philosophy  seems  to  him  to  free  human  beings  from 
the  tyranny  of  materialism,  to  enable  them  to  use  matter 
as  a  mere  symbol  in  the  solution  of  the  soul's  problems, 
and  to  make  the  world  conformable  to  thought.  His 
famous  sentence  in  this  connection  is,  "  The  sensual  man 
conforms  thoughts  to  things;  the  poet  conforms  things 
to  his  thoughts." 

In  The  American  Scholar,  an  address  delivered  at  Cam 
bridge  in  1837,  Emerson  announced  what  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  calls  "our  intellectual  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence."  Tocqueville,  a  gifted  Frenchman  who  visited 
America  in  1831,  wrote:  "  I  know  no  country  in  which 
there  is  so  little  independence  of  opinion  and  freedom  of 


l86          THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

discussion  as  in  America.  ...  If  great  writers  have  not 
existed  in  America,  the  reason  is  very  simply  given  in  the 
fact  that  there  can  be  no  literary  genius  without  freedom  of 
opinion,  and  freedom  of  opinion  does  not  exist  in  America." 
Harriet  Martineau,  an  English  woman,  who  came  to  Amer 
ica  in  1830,  thought  that  the  subservience  to  opinion  in 
and  around  Boston  amounted  to  a  sort  of  mania.  We  have 
already  seen  how  Cooper  in  his  early  days  deferred  to  Eng 
lish  taste  (p.  127),  and  how  Andrew  Jackson  in  his  rough 
way  proved  something  of  a  corrective  (p.  148). 

Emerson  proceeded  to  deal  such  subserviency  a  stag 
gering  blow.  He  denounced  this  "  timid,  imitative,  tame 
spirit,"  emphasized'  the  new  importance  given  to  the  single 
person,  and  asked,  "Is  it  not  the  chief  disgrace  in  the  world 
not  to  be  a  unit ;  —  not  to  be  reckoned  one  character ;  — 
not  to  yield  that  peculiar  fruit  which  each  man  was  created 
to  bear;  but  to  be  reckoned  in  the  gross,  in  the  hundred, 
or  the  thousand,  of  the  party,  the  section,  to  which  we 
belong,  and  our  opinion  predicted  geographically,  as  the 
North,  or  the  South?"  Then  followed  his  famous  declara 
tion  to  Americans,  "  We  will  walk  on  our  own  feet ;  we  will 
work  with  our  own  hands ;  we  will  speak  our  own  minds." 

No  American  author  has  done  more  to  exalt  the  individ 
ual,  to  inspire  him  to  act  according  to  his  own  intuitions 
and  to  mold  the  world  by  his  own  will.  Young  Americans 
especially  listened  to  his  call,  "  O  friend,  never  strike  sail 
to  a  fear !  Come  into  port  greatly,  or  sail  with  God  the 
seas." 

Essays. — The  bulk  of  Emerson's  work  consists  of 
essays,  made  up  in  large  part  from  lectures.  In  1841  he 
published  a  volume,  known  as  Essays,  First  Series,  and 
in  1844,  another  volume,  called  Essays,  Second  Series. 
Other  volumes  followed  from  time  to  time,  such  as  Miscel- 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON  187 

lanies  (1849),  Representative  Men  (1850),  English  Traits 
(1856),  The  Conduct  of  Life  (1860),  Society  and  Solitude 
( 1 870).  While  the  First  Series  of  these  Essays  is  the 
most  popular,  one  may  find  profitable  reading  and  even 
inspiring  passages  scattered  through  almost  all  of  his 
works,  which  continued  to  appear  for  more  than  forty 
years. 

When  we  examine  his  Essays,  First  Series,  we  find  that 
the  volume  is  composed  of  short  essays  on  such  subjects 
as  History,  Self -Reliance,  Friendship,  Heroism,  and  the 
Over-Soul.  If  we  choose  to  read  Self-Reliance,  one  of 
his  most  typical  essays,  we  shall  find  that  the  sentences,  or 
the  clauses  which  take  the  place  of  sentences,  are  short, 
vigorous,  and  intended  to  reach  the  attention  through  the 
ear.  For  instance,  he  says  in  this  essay  :  — 

"  There  is  a  time  in  every  man's  education  when  he  arrives  at  the 
conviction  that  envy  is  ignorance ;  that  imitation  is  suicide ;  that  he 
must  take  himself  for  better,  for  worse,  as  his  portion." 

Before  we  have  finished  Self-Reliance,  he  has  made  us 
feel  that,  with  the  exercise  of  self-trust,  new  powers  will 
appear ;  that  a  man  should  not  postpone  his  life,  but  live 
now;  that  a  man  is  weak  if  he  expects  aid  from  others ; 
that  discontent  is  want  of  self-reliance. 

We  pick  up  another  volume  of  essays,  Society  and  Soli 
tude,  and  wonder  whether  we  shall  read  Success,  or  Books, 
or  Civilization,  or  any  one  of  nine  others.     While  we  are 
turning  the  pages,  we  see  this  sentence  :  — 
"  Hitch  your  wagon  to  a  star," 
and  we  decide  to  read  Civilisation^ 

"  Now  that  is  the  wisdom  of  a  man,  in  every  instance  of  his  labor,  to 
hitch  his  wagon  to  a  star,  and  see  his  chore  done  by  the  gods  them 
selves.  .  .  .  We  cannot  bring  the  heavenly  powers  to  us,  but,  if  we  will 
only  cnoose  our  jobs  in  directions  in  which  they  travel,  they  will  under- 


l88          THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

take  them  with  the  greatest  pleasure.  .  .  .     Let  us  not  lie  and  steal. 
No  god  will  help.     We  shall  find  all  their  teams  going  the  other  way.1' 

The  youth  is  to  be  pitied  if  this  does  not  quicken  his 
determination  to  choose  his  work  in  the  direction  in  which 
the  aiding  forces  of  the  universe  are  traveling. 

Some  of  Emerson's  best  social  philosophy  may  be  found 
in  the  essay,  Considerations  by  the  Way,  published  in  the 
volume  called  The  Conduct  of  Life.  His  English  Traits 
records  in  a  vigorous,  interesting,  common-sense  way  his 
impressions  from  his  travels  in  the  mother  country.  The 
English  find  in  this  volume  some  famous  sentences,  which 
they  love  to  quote,  such  as,  — 

"  That  which  lures  a  solitary  American  in  the  woods  with  the  wish  to 
see  England,  is  the  moral  peculiarity  of  the  Saxon  race,  —  its  command 
ing  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  —  the  love  and  devotion  to  that,  —  this  is 
the  imperial  trait  which  arms  them  with  the  sceptre  of  the  globe." 

Poetry.  —  Emerson's  verse  is  noteworthy  for  its  exposi 
tion  (i)  of  nature  and  (2)  of  his  transcendental  philosophy. 
He  produced  a  comparatively  small  amount  of  poetry,  but 
much  more  than  he  is  popularly  supposed  to  have  written. 
Some  of  his  verse  is  of  a  high  degree  of  excellence ;  in 
fact,  his  nature  poetry  deserves  to  be  ranked  with  the  best 
that  America  has  produced.  Like  Bryant,  Emerson  loves 
the  forest.  He  says  :  — 

"  I  go  to  the  god  of  the  wood 
To  fetch  his  word  to  men." 

In   The  Poet,  we  see  how  great  he  thought  the  poet's  debt 
to  communion  with  nature  :  — 

"  The  gods  talk  in  the  breath  of  the  woods, 

They  talk  in  the  shaken  pine, 
And  fill  the  long  reach  of  the  old  seashore 

With  dialogue  divine ; 
And  the  poet  who  overhears 

Some  random  word  they  say 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON  189 

Is  the  fated  man  of  men 

Whom  the  ages  must  obey." 

Hawthorne  saw  Emerson  one  August  day,  wandering  in 
Sleepy  Hollow  near  Concord,  and  wrote,  "  He  appeared 
to  have  had  a  pleasant  time;  for  he  said  there  were  Muses 
in  the  woods  to-day  and  whispers  to  be  heard  in  the 
breezes."  When  Emerson  was  twenty-four  years  old,  he 
wrote  the  following  lines,  which  show  the  new  feeling  of 
mystic  companionship  with  nature  :  — 

"  These  trees  and  stones  are  audible  to  me, 
These  idle  flowers,  that  tremble  in  the  wind, 
I  understand  their  faery  syllables." 

His  verses  make  us  feel  how  nature  enriches  human  life, 
increases  its  joys,  and  lessens  its  sorrows.  What  modern 
lover  of  nature  has  voiced  a  more  heartfelt,  unaffected 
appreciation  of  her  ministrations  than  may  be  found  in 
these  lines  from  Emerson's  Musketaquid?  — 

"  All  my  hurts 

My  garden  spade  can  heal.     A  woodland  walk, 
A  quest  of  river  grapes,  a  mocking  thrush, 
A  wild  rose  or  rock-loving  columbine, 
Salve  my  worst  wounds." 

From  reading  his  best  nature  poem,  Woodnotes,  first 
published  in  The  Dial,  an  appreciative  person  may  find  it 

easy  to  become 

"  Lover  of  all  things  alive, 
Wonderer  at  all  he  meets," 

to  feel  that  in  the  presence  of  nature,  every  day  is  the 
best  day  of  the  year,  and  possibly  even  to  sing  with  Emer 
son  of  any  spring  or  summer  day  :  — 
"  'Twas  one  of  the-charmed  days 

When  the  genius  of  God  doth  flow ; 
The  wind  may  alter  twenty  ways, 
A  tempest  cannot  blow  •, 


I  go  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

It  may  blow  north,  it  still  is  warm ; 

Or  south,  it  still  is  clear ; 
Or  east,  it  smells  like  a  clover  farm ; 

Or  west,  no  thunder  fear." 

All  who  love  nature  or  who  wish  to  become  interested 
in  her  should  read  at  least  his  Woodnotes,  The  Humble 
Bee,  The  Rhodora,  Each  and  All,  The  Snow  Storm,  and 
To  Ellen  at  the  South. 

Some  of  his  philosophy  may  be  found  in  poems  like  The 
Problem  (1839),  The  Sphinx  (1841),  and  Brahma  (1857). 
The  immanence  of  God  in  everything,  in  the  sculptor's 
hand,  for  instance,  is  well  expressed  in  The  Problem  :  — 

"  The  hand  that  rounded  Peter's  dome 
And  groined  the  aisles  of  Christian  Rome 
Wrought  in  a  sad  sincerity; 
Himself  from  God  he  could  not  free  ; 
He  builded  better  than  he  knew  ;  — 
The  conscious  stone  to  beauty  grew." 

The   Sphinx  thus  expresses   one   of    Emerson's   favorite 

thoughts :  — 

"  To  vision  profounder, 
Man's  spirit  must  dive," 

and  concludes  with  the  Sphinx's  thought-provoking  state 
ment: — 

"  Who  telleth  one  of  my  meanings, 
Is  master  of  all  I  am." 

This  line  in  Brahma :  — 

"  I  am  the  doubter  and  the  doubt," 

shows  his  belief  in  the  unity  of  all  things,  his  conviction 
that  all  existence  and  action  result  from  one  underlying 
force.  His  own  personal  philosophy,  that  which  actuated 
him  in  dealing  with  his  fellow-men,  is  expressed  in  the 
following  lines,  which  are  worthy  a  place  in  the  active 
memory  of  every  American  :  — 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON  IQI 

"  Life  is  too  short  to  waste 

In  critic  peep  or  cynic  bark, 
Quarrel  or  reprimand : 
Twill  soon  be  dark." 

While  we  are  enjoying  his  poetry,  we  feel  its  limitations. 
Having  slight  ear  for  music,  he  often  wrote  halting  lines. 
Sometimes  his  poetic  flight  is  marked  by  too  sudden  a 
descent,  but  we  shall  often  find  in  his  verse  rare  jewels, 
such  as :  — 

"  When  Duty  whispers  low,  *  Thou  musty 
The  youth  replies,  *  /  can. '  " 

These  lines  seemed  to  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  the  moment 
he  saw  them,  as  if  they  had  been  "  carved  on  marble  for  a 
thousand  years."  Emerson's  poetry  does  not  pulsate  with 
warm  human  feeling,  but  it  "follows  the  shining  trail  of 
the  ethereal,"  the  ideal,  and  the  eternal.  His  prose  over 
shadows  his  poetry,  but  no  one  without  natural  poetical 
ability  of  a  high  order  could  have  written  the  lines :  — 

"  O  tenderly  the  haughty  day 
Fills  his  blue  urn  with  fire," 

or  even  have  seen 

"  The  frolic  architecture  of  the  snow." 

General  Characteristics.  —  The  central  aim  of  Emerson's 
writing  is  moral  development.  He  is  America's  greatest 
ethical  teacher.  He  thus  voices  his  fixed  belief :  — 

"  A  breath  of  will  blows  eternally  through  the  universe  of  souls  in  the 
direction  of  the  Right  and  Necessary." 

This  belief  gives  rise  to  his  remarkable  optimism  for  the 
future,  to  his  conviction  that  evil  is  but  a  stepping  stone  to 
good. 

In  a  material  age  he  is  the  great  apostle  of  the  spiritual. 
"Will  you  not  tolerate,"  he  asks,  "one  or  two  solitary 
voices  in  the  land,  speaking  for  thoughts  not  marketable 


THE  NEW   ENGLAND   GROUP 

or  perishable  ?  "     To  him  "  mind  is  the  only  reality,"  and 
his  great  man  is  never  the  one  who  can  merely  alter  matter, 
but  who  can  change  our  state  of  mind.     He  believed  in 
reaching  truth,  guided  by  intuition.     He  would  not  argue 
to  maintain  his  positions.     He  said  that  he  did  not  know 
what  argument  signified  with  reference  to  a  thought.     To 
him  a  thought  was  just  as    natural  a  product  as  a  rose 
and  did  not  need  argument  to  prove  or  justify  its  exist 
ence.     Much  of  his  work  is  tinged  with  Plato's  philosophy. 
Of  all  American  writers,  he  is  the  most  inspiring  teacher 
of  the  young.     One  of   his  chief  objects  is,  in   his  own 
phrase,  "  to  help  the  young  soul,  add  energy,  inspire  hope, 
and  blow  the  coals  into  a  useful  flame ;  to  redeem  defeat 
by  new  thought,  by  firm  action."     John  Tyndall,  the  emi 
nent  English  scientist,  declared  that  the  reading  of   two 
men,  Carlyle  and   Emerson,  had  made  him  what  he  was. 
He  said  to  his  students :  "  I  never  should  have  gone  through 
Analytical  Geometry  and  Calculus,  had  it  not  been   for 
these  men.     I  never  should  have  become  a  physical  in 
vestigator,  and  hence  without  them  I  should  not  have  been 
here  to-day.     They  told  me  what  I  ought  to  do  in  a  way 
that  caused  me  to  do  it,  and  all  my  consequent  intellectual 
action  is  to  be  traced  to  this  purely  moral  force."     After 
hearing  one  of  Emerson's  lectures,  James  Russell  Lowell 
wrote,  "Were  we  enthusiasts?     I   hope   and   believe   we 
were,   and   am  thankful  to  the  man  who  made  us  worth 
something  for  once  in  our  lives." 

Few  authors,  excepting  Shakespeare,  have  more  of  the 
quality  of  universality  in  their  writings.  Many  things  in 
Emerson  will  fit  certain  stages  of  individual  development  as 
well  a  thousand  years  hence  as  to-day  and  be  as  applicable 
to  the  moral  improvement  of  the  Chinese  as  of  Americans. 
If  he  is  not  as  much  read  in  the  future,  it  will  be  largely 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON 


193 


due  to  the  fact  that  his  most  inspiring  subject  matter  has 
been  widely  diffused  through  modern  thought. 

Emerson's  style  is  condensed.  He  spoke  of  his  own 
paragraphs  as  incompressible,  "each  sentence  an  infinitely 
repellent  particle."  Because  of  this  condensation,  it  is 
best  not  to  read  more  than  one  essay  at  a  time.  Years 
ago  some  joker  said  that  Emerson's  Essays  could  be  read 
as  well  backward  as  forward,  because  there  was  no  connec 
tion  between  the  sentences.  The  same  observation  could 
have  been  made  with  almost  equal  truth  about  Proverbs, 
some  of  Bacon's  Essays,  Polonius's  Advice  to  Laertes,  parts 
of  Hamlet's  Soliloquy,  and,  in  general,  about  any  condensed 
sentences  that  endeavor  to  convey  a  complete,  striking 
truth.  Lowell  remarks  acutely :  "  Did  they  say  he  was  dis 
connected  ?  So  were  the  stars.  .  .  .  And  were  they  not 
knit  together  by  a  higher  logic  than  our  mere  sense  could 
master  ?  "  We  should  look  for  unity  and  connection  in 
Emerson's  chosen  subject  matter  and  trend  of  thought. 

We  must  not  forget  that  Emerson  has  in  his  prose  as 
well  as  in  his  verse  many  of  the  general  characteristics  of 
a  poet.  In  his  Essays,  he  sometimes  avails  himself  of  the 
poetic  license  to  be  obscure  and  contradictory  and  to  pre 
sent  philosophy  that  will  not  walk  on  all  fours.  When 
we  examine  some  of  the  best  passages  on  nature  in  his 
early  prose  (e.g.  p.  158),  we  shall  find  that  they  are 
highly  poetical. 

Much  of  his  verse  is  filled  with  the  charm  of  nature  and 
shows  here  and  there  remarkable  power  of  putting  great 
riches  in  a  little  room,  although  there  may  be  intervening 
waste  spaces.  Critics  may  say  that  his  poetry  lacks  deep 
feeling,  that  it  is  mostly  intellectual ;  if  s-o,  it  is  nobly  in 
tellectual.  Both  his  poetry  and  prose,  to  use  an  Emerson- 
ian  expression,  "  sail  the  seas  with  God." 


194 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU,  1817-1862 

Life.  —  Henry  David  Thoreau,  America's  poet-naturalist, 
was  born  in  1817  at  Concord,  Massachusetts.  He  was  one 
of  the  youngest  of  the  famous  Concord  group  of  writers 
and  the  only  one  who  could  claim  Concord  as  his  birth 
place.  He  was  a  lifelong  student  of  nature,  and  he  loved 
the  district  around  Concord.  As  a  boy  he  knew  its  woods 
and  streams  because  he  had  hunted  and  fished  in  them. 
After  his  graduation  from  Harvard  in  1837,  he  substituted 


HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU  195 

for  the  fishing  rod  and  gun,  the  spyglass,  microscope, 
measuring  tape,  and  surveying  instruments,  and  continued 
his  out-of-door  investigations. 

He  taught  school  with  his  brother  and  lectured,  but  in 
order  to  add  to  his  slender  income  also  did  work  unusual 
for  a  Harvard  graduate,  such  as  odd 
jobs  of  carpentering,  planting  trees, 
and  surveying.  He  also  assisted 
his  father  in  his  business  of 
pencil  making,  and  together 
they  made  the  best  pencils 
in  New  England.  What-  ™OREAU'S  SPY-GLASS,  FLUTE,  ETC. 

ever  he  undertook,  he  did  thoroughly.  He  had  no  toler 
ance  for  the  shoddy  or  for  compromises.  Exact  work 
manship  was  part  of  his  religion.  "Drive  a  nail  home,'* 
he  writes  in  Walden,  "and  clinch  it  so  faithfully  that  you 
can  wake  up  in  the  night  and  think  of  your  work  with 
satisfaction." 

Like  so  many  of  the  transcendentalists,  Thoreau  desired 
to  surround  his  life  with  a  "wide  margin  of  leisure"  in  order 
that  he  might  live  in  his  higher  faculties  and  not  be  con 
tinuously  dwarfed  with  the  mere  drudgery  of  earning  his 
sustenance.  He  determined  to  divest  himself  of  as  many 
of  the  burdens  of  civilization  as  possible,  to  lead  the  simple 
life,  and  to  waste  the  least  possible  time  in  the  making  of 
mere  money.  The  leisure  thus  secured,  he  spent  in  study 
ing  birds,  plants,  trees,  fish,  and  other  objects  of  nature, 
in  jotting  down  a  record  of  his  experiences  and  in  writing 
books. 

Since  he  did  not  marry  and  incur  responsibilities  for 
others,  he  was  free  to  choose  his  own  manner  of  life.  His 
regular  habit  was  to  reserve  half  of  every  day  for  walking 
in  the  woods;  but  for  two  years  and  two  months  he  lived 


196 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


alone  in  the  forest,  in  a  small  house  that  he  himself  built 
upon  a  piece  of  Emerson's  property  beside  Walden  Pond, 
about  a  mile  south  of  Concord.  Thoreau  found  that  he 

could  earn  enough  in 
six  weeks  to  support 
himself  in  this  sim 
ple  way  for  the  rest 
of  the  year.  He  thus 
acquired  the  leisure 
to  write  books  that 
are  each  year  read 
with  increasing  inter 
est.  The  record  of 
his  life  at  Walden 
forms  the  basis  for 
his  best  known  work. 
A  few  people  prac 
tice  the  return  to  na 
ture  for  a  short  time, 
but  Thoreau  spent 
his  available  life  with 
nature. 

He  was  a  pro 
nounced  individualist,  carrying  out  Emerson's  doctrine  by 
becoming  independent  of  others'  opinions.  What  he 
thought  right,  he  said  or  did.  He  disapproved,  for  ex 
ample,  of  slavery,  and  consequently  refused  to  pay  his  poll 
tax  to  a  government  that  upheld  slavery.  When  he  was 
imprisoned  because  of  non-payment,  Emerson  visited  him 
and  asked,  "  Why  are  you  here,  Henry  ?  "  Thoreau  merely 
replied,  "  Why  are  you  not  here  ?" 

His  intense  individualism  made  him    angular,  and  his 
transcendental  love  of  isolation  caused  him  to  declare  that 


SITE  OF  THOREAU'S   HUT,   WALDEN    POND 


HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU  197 

he  had  never  found  "  the  companion  that  was  so  companion 
able  as  solitude";  but  he  was,  nevertheless,  spicy,  original, 
loyal  to  friends,  a  man  of  deep  family  affection,  stoical  in 
his  ability  to  stand  privations,  and  Puritanic  in  his  convic 
tion  about  the  moral  aim  of  life.  His  last  illness,  induced 
by  exposure  to  cold,  confined  him  for  months  away  from 
the  out  of  doors  that  he  loved.  In  1862,  at  the  age  of 
forty-five,  he  said,  as  he  lay  on  his  deathbed,  "  When  I  was 
a  very  little  boy,  I  learned  that  I  must  die,  and  I  set  that 
down,  so,  of  course,  I  am  not  disappointed  now."  He  was 
buried  not  far  from  Emerson's  lot  in  the  famous  Sleepy 
Hollow  cemetery  at  Concord. 

Works.  —  Only  two  of  his  books  were  published  during 
his  lifetime.  These  were  A  Week  on  the  Concord  and 
Merrimac  Rivers  (1849)  an^'  Walden  (1854).  The  first  of 
these,  usually  referred  to  as  The  Week,  is  the  record  of  a 
week  spent  in  a  rowboat  on  the  rivers  mentioned  in  the 
title.  The  clearness  and  exactness  of  the  descriptions  are 
remarkable.  Whenever  he  investigated  nature,  he  took 
faithful  notes  so  that  when  he  came  to  write  a  more 
extended  description  or  a  book,  he  might  have  something 
more  definite  than  vague  memory  impressions  on  which  to 
rely.  When  he  describes  in  The  Week  a  mere  patch  of  the 
river  bank,  this  definiteness  of  observation  is  manifest :  — 

"  The  dead  limbs  of  the  willow  were  rounded  and  adorned  by  the 
climbing  milkania,  Milkania  scandens,  which  filled  every  crevice  in  the 
leafy  bank,  contrasting  agreeably  with  the  gray  bark  of  its  supporter  and 
the  balls  of  the  button-bush." 

This  book  did  not  prove  popular,  and  almost  three  fourths 
o^  the  edition  were  left  on  his  hands.  This  unfortunate 
venture  caused  him  to  say,  "  I  have  now  a  library  of  nearly 
nine  hundred  volumes,  over  seven  hundred  of  which  were 
written  by  myself." 


i98 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


Walden  is  the  book  by  which  Thoreau  is  best  known. 
It  is  crisper,  livelier,  more  concise  and  humorous,  and 
less  given  to  introspective  philosophizing  than  The  Week. 
Walden^  New  England's  Utopia,  is  the  record  of  Thoreau's 
experiment  in  endeavoring  to  live  an  ideal  life  in  the 
forest.  This  book  differs  from  most  of  its  kind  in  pre 
senting  actual  life,  in  not  being  mainly  evolved  from  the 
inner  consciousness  on  the  basis  of  a  very  little  experi 
ence.  He  thus  states  the  reason  why  he  withdrew  to  the 
forest  :  — 

"  I  went  to  the  woods  because  I  wished  to  live  deliberately,  to  front 
only  the  essential  facts  of  life,  and  see  if  I  could  not  learn  what  it  had 
to  teach,  'and  not,  when  I  came  to  die,  discover  that  I  had  not  lived. 
I  did  not  wish  to  live  what  was  not  life,  living  is  so  dear." 

His  food  during  his  twenty-six  months  of  residence  there 
cost  him  twenty-seven  cents  a  week.  "  I  learned,"  he  says, 


"from     my 
incredibly 


two  years'  experience  that  it  would  cost 
little  trouble  to  obtain  one's  necessary 
.  food,  even  in  this  latitude  ;  that 
a  man  may  use  as  simple  a 
diet  as  the  animals,  and 
yet  retain  health  and 
strength.  ...  I  am  con 
vinced  both  by  faith  and 
experience  that  to  main 
tain  one's  self  on  this 
earth  is  not  a  hardship, 
but  a  pastime."  This 
book  has,  directly  or  indirectly,  caused  more  to  desire  the 
simple  life  and  a  return  to  nature  than  any  other  work  in 
American  literature. 

In    Walden  he  speaks  of  himself  as  a  "self-appointed 
inspector  of  snowstorms  and  rainstorms."     His  companion- 


FURNITURE   FROM  THOREAU'S  CABIN, 
WALDEN   POND 


HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU  199 

ship  with  nature  became  so  intimate  as  to  cause  him  to 
say,  "Every  little  pine  needle  expanded  and  swelled  with 
sympathy  and  befriended  me."  When  a  sparrow  alighted 
upon  his  shoulder,  he  exclaimed,  "  I  felt  that  I  was  more 
distinguished  by  that  circumstance  than  I  should  have  been 
by  any  epaulet  I  could  have  worn."  When  nature  had 
some  special  celebration  with  the  trees,  such  as  decking 
them  with  snow  or  ice  or  the  first  buds  of  spring,  he 
frequently  tramped  eight  or  ten  miles  "to  keep  an  ap 
pointment  with  a  beech-tree  or  a  yellow-birch,  or  an  old 
acquaintance  among  the  pines."  It  is  amusing  to  read 
how  on  such  a  walk  he  disturbed  the  daytime  slumbers  of 
a  large  owl,  how  the  bird  opened  its  eyes  wide,  "  but  their 
lids  soon  fell  again,  and  he  began  to  nod,"  and  how  a 
sympathetic  hypnotization  began  to  take  effect  on  Thoreau. 
"  I  too,"  he  says,  "  felt  a  slumberous  influence  after  watching 
him  half  an  hour,  as  he  sat  thus  with  his  eyes  half  open, 
like  a  cat,  winged  brother  of  the  cat." 

In  spite  of  some  Utopian  philosophy  and  too  much  in 
sistence  on  the  self-sufficiency  of  the  individual,  Walden 
has  proved  a  regenerative  force  in  the  lives  of  many  readers 
who  have  not  passed  the  plastic  stage.  The  book  devel 
ops  a  love  for  even  commonplace  natural  objects,  and,  like 
poetry,  discloses  a  new  world  of  enjoyment.  Walden  is 
Thoreau's  most  vital  combination  of  his  poetic  appre 
hension  of  wild  nature  with  his  philosophy  and  aggressive 
individualism. 

Almost  all  of  his  work  is  autobiographical,  a  record  of 
actual  experience.  The  Maine  Woods  (1864),  Cape  Cod 
(1865),  and  A  Yankee  in  Canada  (1866)  are  records  of  his 
tramps  in  the  places  named  in  the  titles,  but  these  works 
do  not  possess  the  interest  of  Walden. 

His  voluminous  manuscript  Journal  is  an  almost  daily 


200  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

record  of  his  observations  of  nature,  mingled  with  his 
thoughts,  from  the  time  when  he  left  college  until  his  last 
sickness.  At  periods  for  nearly  fifty  years  after  his  death, 
various  works  have  been  compiled  from  this  Journal. 
The  volumes  published  under  the  titles,  Early  Spring  in 
Massachusetts  (1881),  Summer  (1884),  Winter  (1887), 
Autumn  (1892),  and  Notes  on  New  England  Birds  (1910) 
were  not  arranged  by  him  in  their  present  form.  Editors 
searched  his  Journal  for  entries  dealing  with  the  same 
season  or  type  of  life,  and  put  these  in  the  same  volume. 
Sometimes,  as,  for  instance,  in  Winter,  paragraphs  separated 
by  an  interval  of  nineteen  years  in  composition  become 
neighbors.  In  spite  of  the  somewhat  fragmentary  nature 
of  these  works,  lovers  of  Thoreau  become  intensely  inter 
ested  in  them.  His  Journal  in  the  form  in  which  he  left 
it  was  finally  published  in  1906,  in  fourteen  volumes  con 
taining  68 1 1  printed  pages.  He  differs  from  the  majority 
of  writers  because  the  interest  in  his  work  increases  with 
the  passing  of  the  years. 

General  Characteristics. — Thoreau's  object  was  to  dis 
cover  how  to  live  a  rich,  full  life  with  a  broad  margin  of 
leisure.  Intimate  companionship  with  nature  brought  this 
secret  to  him,  and  he  has  taught  others  to  increase  the  joys 
of  life  from  sympathetic  observation  of  everyday  occur 
rences. 

A  mere  unimaginative  naturalist  may  be  a  bore ;  but 
Thoreau  regarded  nature  with  the  eyes  of  a  poet.  His 
ear  was  thrilled  with  the  vesper  song  of  the  whippoorwill, 
the  lisping  of  the  chickadee  among  the  evergreens,  and  the 
slumber  call  of  the  toads.  For  him  the  bluebird  "  carries 
the  sky  on  its  back."  The  linnets  come  to  him  "  bearing 
summer  in  their  natures."  When  he  asks,  "Who  shall 
stand  godfather  at  the  christening  of  the  wild  apples?"  his 


HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU  2OI 

reply  shows  rare  poetic  appreciation  of  nature's  work  :  — 

"  We  should  have  to  call  in  the  sunrise  and  the  sunset,  the  rainbow 
and  the  autumn  woods  and  the  wild  flowers,  and  the  woodpecker  and 
the  purple  finch  and  the  squirrel  and  the  jay  and  the  butterfly,  the  No 
vember  traveler  and  the  truant  boy,  to  our  aid." 

He  is  not  only  a  poet-naturalist,  but  also  a  philosopher, 
who  shows  the  influence  of  the  transcendental  school,  par 
ticularly  of  Emerson.  Some  of  Thoreau's  philosophy  is 
impractical  and  too  unsocial,  but  it  aims  to  discover  the 
underlying  basis  of  enchantment.  He  thus  sums  up  the 
philosophy  which  his  life  at  Walden  taught  him  :  — 

"I  learned  this  at  least  by  my  experiment  —  that  if  one  advances 
confidently  in  the  direction  of  his  dreams,  and  endeavors  to  live  the 
life  which  he  has  imagined,  he  will  meet  with  a  success  unexpected  in 
common  hours.  ...  If  you  have  built  castles  in  the  air,  your  work 
need  not  be  lost ;  that  is  where  they  should  be.  Now  put  the  founda 
tions  under  them." 

The  reason  why  he  left  Walden  shows  one  of  his  pro 
nounced  transcendental  characteristics,  a  dread  of  repeti 
tion.  He  gives  an  account  of  only  his  first  year  of  life 
there,  and  adds,  "  the  second  year  was  similar  to  it."  He 
says : — 

"  I  left  the  woods  for  as  good  a  reason  as  I  went  there.  Perhaps  it 
seemed  to  me  that  I  had  several  more  lives  to  live,  and  could  not  spare 
any  more  time  for  that  one.  It  is  remarkable  how  easily  and  insensibly 
we  fall  into  a  particular  route,  and  make  a  beaten  track  for  ourselves. 
I  had  not  lived  there  a  week  before  my  feet  wore  a  path  from  my  door 
to  the  pond  side." 

He  does  not  demand  that  other  human  beings  shall  imi 
tate  him  in  devoting  their  lives  to  a  study  of  nature.  He 
says,  "  Follow  your  genius  closely  enough,  and  it  will  not 
fail  to  show  you  a  fresh  prospect  every  hour."  He  thus 
expresses  his  conception  of  the  fundamental  basis  of  hap 
piness  in  any  of  the  chosen  avenues  of  life :  - 


202          THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

"  Our  whole  life  is  startlingly  moral.  There  is  never  an  instant's 
truce  between  virtue  and  vice.  Goodness  is  the  only  investment  that 
never  fails." 

His  insistence  on  the  necessity  of  a  moral  basis  for  a 
happy  life  is  a  characteristic  that  he  shared  in  common 
with  the  great  authors  of  the  New  England  group,  but  he 
had  his  own  individual  way  of  impressing  this  truth.  He 
thought  life  too  earnest  a  quest  to  tolerate  the  frivolous 
or  the  dilettante,  and  he  issued  his  famous  warning  that 
no  one  can  "  kill  time  without  injuring  eternity."  His  aim 
in  studying  nature  was  not  so  much  scientific  discovery  as 
the  revelation  of  nature's  joyous  moral  message  to  the 
spiritual  life  of  man.  He  may  have  been  unable  to  dis 
tinguish  between  the  song  of  the  wood  thrush  and  the 
hermit  thrush.  To  him  the  most  important  fact  was  that 
the  thrush  is  a  rare  poet,  singing  of  "  the  immortal  wealth 
and  vigor  that  is  in  the  forest."  "The  thrush  sings," 
says  Thoreau,  in  his  Journal,  "to  make  men  take  higher 
and  truer  views  of  things." 

The  sterling  honesty  and  directness  of  Thoreau's  char 
acter  are  reflected  in  his  style.  He  says,  "  The  one  great 
rule  of  composition  —  and  if  I  were  a  professor  of  rhetoric 
I  should  insist  on  this  —  is  to  speak  the  truth."  This  was 
his  aim  in  presenting  the  results  of  the  experience  of  his 
soul,  as  well  as  of  his  senses.  If  he  exaggerated  the  im 
portance  of  a  certain  way  of  regarding  things,  he  did  so 
only  because  he  thought  the  exaggeration  was  necessary  to 
secure  attention  for  that  particular  truth,  which  would  even 
then  not  be  apprehended  at  its  full  value.  His  style  has  a 
peculiar  flavor,  difficult  to  describe.  Lowell's  characteri 
zation  of  Thoreau's  style  has  hardly  been  surpassed. 
"  His  range  was  narrow,  but  to  be  a  master  is  to  be  a 
master.  There  are  sentences  of  his  as  perfect  as  anything 


HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU  203 

in  the  language,  and  thoughts  as  clearly  crystallized; 
his  metaphors  and  images  are  always  fresh  from  the 
soil." 

Thoreau's  style  shows  remarkable  power  of  description. 
No  American  has  surpassed  him  in  unique  description  of 
the  most  varied  incidents  in  the  procession  of  all  the 
seasons.  We  shall  find  frequent  illustrations  of  this  power 
scattered  through  his  Journal ':  — 

'•'•June  i,  1857.  I  hear  the  note  of  a  bobolink  concealed  in  the  top 
of  an  apple  tree  behind  me.  ...  He  is  just  touching  the  strings  of  his 
theorbo,  his  glassichord,  his  water  organ,  and  one  or  two  notes  globe 
themselves  and  fall  in  liquid  bubbles  from  his  teeming  throat.  It  is  as 
if  he  touched  his  harp  within  a  vase  of  liquid  melody,  and  when  he 
lifted  it  out,  the  notes  fell  like  bubbles  from  the  trembling  string  .  .  . 
the  meadow  is  all  bespattered  wjth  melody.  His  notes  fall  with  the 
apple  blossoms,  in  the  orchard." 

Even  more  characteristic  is  an  entry  in  his  Journal  for 
June  11,  1840,  where  he  tries  to  fathom  the  consciousness 
of  the  solitary  bittern  :  — 

"  With  its  patient  study  by  rocks  and  sandy  capes,  has  it  wrested 
the  whole  of  her  secret  from  Nature  yet?  It  has  looked  out  from  its 
dull  eye  for  so  long,  standing  on  one  leg,  on  moon  and  stars  sparkling 
through  silence  and  dark,  and  now  what  a  rich  experience  is  its !  What 
says  it  of  stagnant  pools,  and  reeds,  and  damp  night  fogs?  It  would  be 
worth  while  to  look  in  the  eye  which  has  been  open  and  seeing  in  such 
hours  and  in  such  solitudes.  When  I  behold  that  dull  yellowish  green, 
I  wonder  if  my  own  soul  is  not  a  bright  invisible  green.  I  would  fain 
lay  my  eye  side  by  side  with  its  and  learn  of  it." 

In  this  entry,  which  was  probably  never  revised  for  pub 
lication,  we  note  three  of  his  characteristics :  his  images 
"fresh  from  the  soil,"  adding  vigor  to  his  style;  his  mystic 
and  poetic  communion  with  nature;  and  the  peculiar  tran 
scendental  desire  to  pass  beyond  human  experience  and  to 
supplement  it  with  new  revelations  of  the  gospel  of  nature. 


204 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE,   1804-1864 

Ancestry  and  Early  Years.  —  William  Hathorne,  the  an 
cestor  of  America's  greatest  prose  writer,  sailed  at  the  age 
of  twenty-three  from  England  on  the  ship  Arbella  with  John 
Winthrop  (p.  30),  and  finally  settled  at  Salem,  Massachu 
setts.  He  brought  with  him  a  copy  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney's 
Arcadia,  a  very  unusual  book  for  the  library  of  a  New 
England  Puritan. 

John  Hathorne,  a  son  of  the  first  settler,  was  a  judge 
of  the  poor  creatures  who  were  put  to  death  as  witches  at 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE 


205 


Salem  in  1692.  The  great  romance  writer  says  that  this 
ancestor  "made  himself  so  conspicuous  in  the  martyrdom 
of  the  witches,  that  their  blood  may  fairly  be  said  to  have 
left  a  stain  upon  him. 
...  I,  the  present 
writer,  as  their  repre 
sentative,  hereby  take 
shame  upon  myself 
for  their  sakes,  and 
pray  that  any  curse 
incurred  by  them  — 
as  I  have  heard,  and 
as  the  dreary  and  un- 
prosperous  condition 
of  the  race,  for  many 
a  long  year  back, 
would  argue  to  exist 
—  may  be  now  and  henceforth  removed."  Tradition 
says  that  the  husband  of  one  of  the  tortured  victims 
appealed  to  God  to  avenge  her  sufferings  and  murder. 
Probably  the  ancestral  curse  hanging  over  The  House  of  the 
Seven  Gables  would  not  have  been  so  vividly  conceived,  if 
such  a  curse  had  not  been  traditional  in  the  Hawthorne 
family. 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  the  sixth  in  descent  from  the  first 
New  England  ancestor,  and  the  first  of  his  family  to  add  a 
"  w  "  to  his  name,  was  born  in  Salem  in  1804.  His  father, 
a  sea  captain,  died  of  a  fever  at  a  foreign  port  in  1808. 
Hawthorne's  mother  was  twenty-seven  years  old  at  this 
time,  and  for  forty  years  after  this  sad  event,  she  usually 
took  her  meals  in  her  own  room  away  from  her  three 
children.  Everybody  in  that  household  became  accustomed 
to  loneliness  At  the  age  of  fourteen,  the  boy  went  to  live 


HAWTHORNE'S    BIRTHPLACE,   SALEM, 
MASSACHUSETTS 


306          THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

for  a  while  on  the  shore  of  Sebago  Lake,  Maine.  <:  I  lived 
in  Maine,"  he  said,  "  like  a  bird  of  the  air,  so  perfect  was 
the  freedom  I  enjoyed.  But  it  was  there  I  got  my  cursed 
habits  of  solitude."  Shyness  and  aversion  to  meeting 
people  became  marked  characteristics. 

His  solitariness  predisposed  him  to  reading,  and  we  are 
told  that  Bunyan's  Pilgrim's  Progress  and  Shakespeare's 
plays  were  special  favorites.  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene  was 
the  first  book  that  he  bought  with  his  own  money.  Bun- 
yan  and  Spenser  probably  fostered  his  love  of  the  allegor 
ical  method  of  presenting  truth,  a  method  that  is  in  evi 
dence  in  the  bulk  of  Hawthorne's  work.  He  even  called 
his  daughter  Una,  after  one  of  Spenser's  allegorical 
heroines,  and,  following  the  suggestion  in  the  Faerie  Queene, 
gave  the  name  of  "  Lion  "  to  the  large  cat  that  came  to 
her  as  a  playmate. 

At  the  age  of  seventeen,  Hawthorne  went  to  Bowdoin 
College,  Maine,  where  he  met  such  students  as  Longfellow, 
Franklin  Pierce,  and  Horatio  Bridge,  in  after  years  a  naval 
officer,  who  published  in  1893  a  delightful  volume  called 
Personal  Reminiscences  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  These 
friends  changed  the  course  of  Hawthorne's  life.  In  his 
dedication  of  The  Snow  Image  to  Bridge  in  1850,  Haw 
thorne  says,  "  If  anybody  is  responsible  for  my  being  at 
this  day  an  author,  it  is  yourself." 

Literary  Apprenticeship.  —  After  leaving  college,  Milton 
spent  nearly  six  years  in  studious  retirement;  but  Haw 
thorne  after  graduating  at  Bowdoin,  in  1825,  passed  in  se 
clusion  at  Salem  a  period  twice  as  long.  Here  he  lived 
the  life  of  a  recluse,  frequently  postponing  his  walks  until 
after  dark.  He  was  busy  serving  his  apprenticeship  as  an 
author.  In  1828  he  paid  one  hundred  dollars  for  the  pub 
lication  of  Fanshaive,  an  unsuccessful  short  romance.  In 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE 


207 


MISS    PEABODY'S    DRAWING   FOR   "THE  GENTLE   BOY' 


mortification  he  burned  the  unsold  copies,  and  his  rejected 

short    stories    often    shared  the    same    fate.     He  was  so 

depressed  that  in  1836  his  friend  Bridge  went  quietly  to  a 

publisher     and     by 

guaranteeing       him 

against  loss  induced 

him    to    bring    out 

Hawthorne's  volume 

entitled    Twice-  Told 

Tales. 

The  Peabodys  of 
Salem  then  invited 
the  author  to  their 
home,  where  he  met 
the  artistic  Miss 
Sophia  Peabody, 
who  made  an  illustration  for  his  fine  historical  story,  The 
Gentle  Boy.  Of  her  he  wrote,  "  She  is  a  flower  to  be  worn 
in  no  man's  bosom,  but  was  lent  from  Heaven  to  show  the 
possibilities  of  the  human  soul."  We  find  that  not  long 
after  he  wrote  in  his  American  Note-Books:  — 

"  All  that  seems  most  real  about  us  is  but  the  thinnest  substance  of  a 
dream,  —  till  the  heart  be  touched.  That  touch  creates  us,  —  then 
we  begin  to  be,  —  thereby  we  are  beings  of  reality  and  inheritors  of 
eternity.1' 

He  was  thinking  of  Sophia  Peabody's  creative  touch,  for 
he  had  become  engaged  to  her. 

Fired  with  the  ambition  of  making  enough  money  to  en 
able  him  to  marry,  he  secured  a  subordinate  position  in  the 
Boston  customhouse,  from  which  the  spoils  system  was 
soon  responsible  for  his  discharge.  He  then  invested  in 
Brook  Farm  a  thousand  dollars  which  he  had  saved,  think 
ing  that  this  would  prove  a  home  to  which  he  could  bring 


208  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

his  future  wife  and  combine  work  and  writing  in  an  ideal 
way.  A  year's  trial  of  this  life  convinced  him  of  his  mistake. 
He  was  then  thirty-eight,  and  much  poorer  for  his  last  ex 
periment;  but  he  withdrew  and  in  a  few  months  married 
Miss  Peabody  and  took  her  to  live  in  the  famous  Old  Manse 


"THE   OLD   MANSE,"    HAWTHORNE'S   FIRST   CONCORD   HOME 

at  Concord.     The  first  entry  in  his  American  Note-Books 
after  this  transforming  event  is :  — 

"  And  what  is  there  to  write  about  ?  Happiness  has  no  succession 
of  events,  because  it  is  a  part  of  eternity ;  and  we  have  been  living  in 
eternity  ever  since  we  came  to  this  old  manse.  Like  Enoch  we  seem 
to  have  been  translated  to  the  other  state  of  being,  without  having 
passed  through  death," 

The  history  of  American  literature  can  record  no  happier 
marriage  and  no  more  idyllic  life  than  this  couple  lived  for 
nearly  four  years  in  the  Old  Manse.  While  residing  here, 
Hawthorne  wrote  another  volume,  known  as  Mosses  from 
an  Old  Manse  ( 1 846).  The  only  serpent  to  enter  that  Eden 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE  2OQ 

was  poverty.  Hawthorne's  pen  could  not  support  his  family. 
He  found  himself  in  debt  before  he  had  finished  his  fourth 
year  in  Concord.  Moncure  D.  Conway,  writing  Haw 
thorne's  Life  in  1890,  the  year  before  American  authors 
were  protected  by  international  copyright,  says,  "  In  no 
case  has  literature,  pure  and  simple,  ever  supported  an 
American  author,  unless,  possibly,  if  ho  were  a  bachelor" 
Hawthorne's  college  friends,  Bridge  and  Pierce,  came  to 
his  assistance,  and  used  their  influence  with  President  Polk 
to  secure  for  Hawthorne  the  position  of  surveyor  of  cus 
toms  at  Salem,  with  a  yearly  salary  of  twelve  hundred 
dollars. 

His  Prime  and  Later  Years.  —  He  kept  his  position  as 
head  customs  officer  at  Salem  for  three  years.  Soon  after 
President  Taylor  was  inaugurated  in  1849,  tne  spoils  sys 
tem  again  secured  Hawthorne's  removal.  When  he  came 
home  dejected  with  this  news,  his  wife  smiled  and  said, 
"  Oh,  then  you  can  write  your  book !  "  The  Scarlet  Letter, 
published  in  1850,  was  the  result.  The  publisher  printed 
five  thousand  copies,  all  that  he  had  ever  expected  to  sell, 
and  then  ordered  the  type  to  be  distributed  at  once.  Find 
ing  in  ten  days,  however,  that  every  copy  had  been  sold,  he 
gave  the  order  to  have  the  type  reset  and  permanent  plates 
made.  Hawthorne  had  at  last,  at  the  age  of  forty-six,  be 
come  one  of  the  greatest  writers  of  English  prose  romance. 
From  this  time  he  wrote  but  few  short  tales. 

He  left  Salem  in  the  year  of  the  publication  of  The 
Scarlet  Letter,  never  again  to  return  to  it  as  a  place  of  resi 
dence,  although  his  pen  continued  to  help  immortalize  his 
birthplace. 

In  1852  he  bought  of  Bronson  Alcott  in  Concord  a  house 
since  known  as  the  "Wayside."  This  was  to  be  Haw 
thorne's  American  home  during  his  remaining  years.  Here 


210 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 


he  had  a  tower  room  so  constructed  as  to  be  well-nigh  in 
accessible  to  visitors,  and  he  also  had  a  romantic  study 
bower  built  in  the  pine  trees  on  a  hill  back  of  his  house. 

His  college  friend, 
Pierce,  was  inaugurated 
President  of  the  United 
States  in  '1853,  and  he  ap 
pointed  Hawthorne  con 
sul  at  Liverpool.  This 
consulship  then  netted 
the  holder  between  $5000 
and  l/ooo  a  year.  After 
nearly  four  years'  serv 
ice  in  this  position,  he 
resigned  and  traveled  in 
Europe  with  his  family. 
They  lived  in  Rome  suffi 
ciently  long  for  him  to 
absorb  the  local  color  for 
his  romance  of  The  Mar 
ble  Faun.  He  remained 
abroad  for  seven  years.  The  record  of  his  travels  and  im 
pressions  may  be  found  in  his  English  Note-Books  and  in 
his  French  and  Italian  Note-Books.  Our  Old  Home,  a  vol 
ume  based  on  his  English  Note-Books,  is  a  more  finished 
account  of  his  thoughts  and  experiences  in  England. 

In  i860  he  returned  quietly  to  his  Concord  home.  His 
health  was  failing,  but  he  promised  to  write  for  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  another  romance,  called  The  Dolliver  Romance. 
This,  however,  was  never  finished,  and  The  Marble  Faun 
remains  the  last  of  his  great  romances.  His  health  contin 
ued  to  fail,  and  in  May,  1864,  Pierce,  thinking  that  atrip 
might  prove  beneficial,  started  with  him  on  a  journey  to  the 


HAWTHORNE'S  PINE  STUDY,  CONCORD 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE  211 

White  Mountains.  Hawthorne  retired  for  the  night  at  the 
hotel  in  Plymouth,  New  Hampshire,  and  the  next  morn 
ing  Pierce  found  that  Hawthorne's  wish  of  dying  unawares 
in  his  sleep  had  been  gratified.  He  had  passed  away  be 
fore  the  completion  of  his  fifty-ninth  year.  He  was  buried 
underneath  the  pines  in  the  Sleepy  Hollow  cemetery  at 
Concord.  His  classmate,  Longfellow,  wrote  :  — 

"  There  in  seclusion  and  remote  from  men, 
The  wizard  hand  lies  cold." 

"Twice  Told  Tales"  and  "Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse." 

—  Many  do  not  realize  that  these  two  volumes  contain 
eighty-two  tales  or  sketches  and  that  they  represent  the 
most  of  Hawthorne's  surviving  literary  work  for  the  first 
forty-five  years  of  his  life.  The  title  for  Twice-Told 
Tales  (1837)  was  probably  suggested  by  the  line  from 
Shakespeare's  King  John :  "  Life  is  as  tedious  as  a  twice- 
told  tale."  The  second  volume,  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse 
(1846),  took  its  name  from  Hawthorne's  first  Concord  home. 
His  last  collection  is  called  The  Snow  Image  and  Other 
Twice-Told  Tales '(1851).  Each  one  of  these  volumes  con 
tains  some  of  his  short-story  masterpieces,  although,  taken 
as  a  whole,  the  collection  in  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse 
shows  the  greatest  power  and  artistic  finish. 

The  so-called  tales  in  these  volumes  are  of  several  dif 
ferent  types,  (i)  There  is  the  story  which  presents  chiefly 
allegorical  or  symbolic  truth,  such  as  Rappacini's  Daughter, 
The  Great  Stone  Face,  The  Birthmark,  The  Artist  of  the 
Beautiful,  and  The  Snow  Image.  The  last  story,  one  of 
the  greatest  of  this  class,  relates  how  two  children  make  a 
companion  out  of  a  snow  image,  how  Jack  Frost  and  the 
pure  west  wind  endow  this  image  with  life  and  give  them 
a  little  "  snow  sister."  She  grows  more  vigorous  with 


212  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

every  life-giving  breath  inhaled  from  the  west  wind.  She 
extends  her  hands  to  the  snow-birds,  and  they  joyously 
flock  to  her.  The  father  of  these  children  is  a  deadly  lit 
eral  man.  No  tale  of  fairy,  no  story  of  dryad,  of  Aladdin's 
lamp,  or  of  winged  sandal  had  ever  carried  magical  meaning 
to  his  unimaginative  literal  mind,  and  he  proceeds  to  disen 
chant  the  children.  Like  Nathan  the  prophet,  Hawthorne 
wished  to  say,  "Thou  art  the  man,"  to  some  tens  of  thou 
sands  of  stupid  destroyers  of  those  ideals  which  bring 
something  of  Eden  back  to  our  everyday  lives.  This 
story,  like  so  many  of  the  others,  was  written  with  a  moral 
purpose.  There  are  to-day  people  who  measure  their  ac 
quaintances  by  their  estimates  of  this  allegorical  story. 

(2)  Another  type  of  Hawthorne's  stories  illustrates  the 
history   of   New    England.     Such   are    The    Gentle   Boy, 
The  Maypole  of  Merry  Mount,  Endicotfs  Red  Cross,  and 
Lady  Eleanore's  Mantle.     We   may  even  include  in  this 
list   Young  Goodman  Brown,  in  one  sense  an  unreal  and 
fantastic  tale,  but  in  another,  historically  true  to  the  Puri 
tanic  idea  of  the  orgies  of  witches  in  a  forest.     If  we  wish, 
for  instance,  to  supplement  the  cold  page  of  history  with 
a  tale  that  breathes  the  very  atmosphere  of  the  Quaker 
persecution  of  New  England,  let  us  open  The  Twice-Told 
Tales  and  read  the  story  of  The  Gentle  Boy,  a  Quaker  child 
of    six,  found  sobbing  on  his  father's  newly-made  grave 
beside  the  scaffold  under  the  fir  tree.     Let  us  enter  the 
solemn  meeting  house,  hear  the  clergyman  inveigh  against 
the  Quakers,  and  sit  petrified  when,  at  the  end  of  the  ser 
mon,  that  boy's  mother,  like  a  Daniel  entering  the  lion's 
den,  ascends  the  pulpit,  and  invokes  woe  upon  the  Puri 
tans. 

(3)  We  shall  occasionally  find  in  these  volumes   what 
eighteenth-century  readers   of   the  Spectator  would   have 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE  213 

called  a  "  paper,"  that  is,  a  delightful  bit  of  mixed  descrip 
tion  and  narration,  "a  narrative  essay  "  or  "a  sketch,"  as 
some  prefer  to  call  it.  In  this  class  we  may  include  77** 
Old  Manse,  The  Old  Apple-Dealer,  Sights  from  a  Steeple, 
A  Rill  from  the  Town  Pump,  and  the  masterly  Introduction 
to  The  Scarlet  Letter. 

The  Old  Manse,  the  first  paper  in  Mosses  from  an  Old 
Manse,  is  excellent.  Hawthorne  succeeds  in  taking  his 
readers  with  him  up  the  Assabeth  River,  in  a  boat  made  by 
Thoreau.  We  agree  with  Hawthorne  that  a  lovelier  river 
"  never  flowed  on  earth,  —  nowhere  indeed  except  to  lave 
the  interior  regions  of  a  poet's  imagination."  When  we 
return  with  him  at  the  end  of  that  day's  excursion,  we  are 
almost  tempted  to  say  that  we  can  never  again  be  enslaved 
as  before.  We  feel  that  we  can  say  with  him  :  — 

"  We  were  so  free  to-day  that  it  was  impossible  to  be  slaves  again  to 
morrow.  When  we  crossed  the  threshold  of  the  house  or  trod  the 
thronged  pavements  of  a  city,  still  the  leaves  of  the  trees  that  overhang 
the  Assabeth  were  whispering  to  us,  '  Be  free !  Be  free.1  " 

These  volumes  entitle  Hawthorne  to  be  ranked  among  the 
greatest  of  short-story  writers.  Like  Irving,  Hawthorne 
did  not  take  the  air  line  directness  of  narration  demanded 
by  the  modern  short  story  ;  but  the  moral  truth  and  beauty 
of  his  tales  will  long  prove  their  elixir  of  life,  after  the 
passing  of  many  a  modern  short  story  which  has  divested 
itself  of  everything  except  the  mere  interest  in  narration. 

Children's  Stories.  —  Hawthorne's  Grandfather's  Chair 
(1841)  is  a  series  of  simple  stories  of  New  England  history, 
from  the  coming  of  the  Mayflower  to  the  death  of  Samuel 
Adams  in  1803.  Hawthorne's  greatest  success  in  writing 
for  children  is  to  be  found  in  his  A  Wonder  Book  (1851) 
and  Tanglewood  Tales  (1853).  In  these  volumes  he  has 
adapted  the  old  classical  myths  to  the  tastes  of  American 


214 


THE  NEW   ENGLAND    GROUP 


children.  His  unusual  version  of  these  myths  meets  two 
supreme  tests.  Children  like  it,  and  are  benefited  by  it. 
Many  would  rejoice  to  be  young  enough  again  to  hear  for 
the  first  time  the  story  of  The  Golden  Touch,  —  how  Midas 
prized  gold  above  all  things,  how  he  secured  the  golden 
touch,  and  how  the  flies  that  alighted  on  his  nose  fell  off 
little  nuggets  of  gold.  What  a  fine  thing  we  thought  the 
golden  touch  until  he  touched  his  beautiful  little  daughter, 
Marygold!  No  sermon  could  better  have  taught  us  that 
gold  is  not  the  thing  above  all  to  be  desired. 

Hawthorne  stands  in  the 
front  rank  of  a  very  small 
number  whose  writings  con 
tinue  to  appeal  to  the  chil 
dren  of  succeeding  genera 
tions.  He  loved  and  under 
stood  children  and  shared 
their  experiences.  He  was 
one  of  those  whose  sixteenth 
amendment  to  the  Constitu 
tion  reads,  "  The  rights  and 
caprices  of  children  in  the 
United  States  shall  not  be 
denied  or  abridged  on  ac 
count  of  age,  sex,  or  formal 
condition  of  tutelage." 

Great  Romances.  —  Haw 
thorne  wrote  four  long  ro- 
THE  HOUSE  OF  THE  SEVEN  GABLES         mances  \   TJic  Scarlet  Letter 

(Copyright,  I898,  by  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.)         (^50),    the    SCCttC    of    which 

is  laid  in  Boston  in  Governor  Winthrop's  time,  TJie  House 
of  the  Seven  Gables  (1851),  with  the  scene  laid  in  Salem,  The 
Marble  Faun(i%6o\  in  Rome,  and  The  Blithedale  Romance 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE  215 

(1852),  in  an  ideal  community  similar  to  Brook  Farm.  The 
first  three  of  these  works  have  a  great  moral  truth  to  pre 
sent.  Accordingly,  the  details  of  scene,  plot,  description, 
and  conversation  are  handled  so  as  to  emphasize  this 
central  truth. 

The  Scarlet  Letter  was  written  to  show  that  the  con 
sequences  of  a  sin  cannot  be  escaped  and  that  many 
different  lives  are  influenced  by  one  wrong  deed.  The 
lives  of  Hester  Prynne,  Reverend  Arthur  Dimmesdale, 
and  Roger  Chillingworth  are  wrecked  by  the  crime  in 
The  Scarlet  Letter.  Roger  Chillingworth  is  transformed 
into  a  demon  of  revenge.  So  malevolent  does  he  be 
come  that  Hester  wonders  "whether  the  tender  grass  of 
early  spring  would  not  be  blighted  beneath  him."  She 
would  not  be  surprised  to  see  him  "spread  bat's  wings 
and  flee  away."  The  penalty  paid  by  Arthur  Dimmes 
dale  is  to  appear  to  be  what  he  is  not,  and  this  is  a 
terrible  punishment  to  his  sensitive  nature.  The  slow 
steps  by  which  his  soul  is  tortured  and  darkened  are  fol 
lowed  with  wonderful  clearness,  and  the  agony  of  his 
soul  alone  with  God  is  presented  with  an  almost  Shake 
spearean  pen.  The  third  sufferer  is  the  beautiful  Hester 
Prynne.  Her  fate  is  the  most  terrible  because  she  not 
only  writhes  under  a  severe  punishment  inflicted  by  the 
authorities,  but  also  surfers  from  daily,  even  hourly, 
remorse.  To  help  assuage  her  grief  and  to  purify 
her  soul,  Hester  becomes  the  self-effacing  good  Samari 
tan  of  the  village.  Her  uncomplaining  courage,  noble 
beauty,  and  self-sacrifice  make  her  the  center  of  this  tragic 
story. 

Shakespeare  proposed  no  harder  problem  than  the  one 
in  The  Scarlet  Letter,  —  the  problem  of  the  expiation  of  sin. 
The  completeness  with  which  everything  is  subordinated 


2l6 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


to  the  moral  question  involved,  and  the  intensity  with  which 
this  question  is  tieated,  show  the  Puritanic  temperament 
and  the  imaginative  genius  of  the  author.  Hawthorne  is 
Puritan  in  the  earnestness  of  his  purpose,  but  he  is  wholly 

the  artist  in  carrying  out  his 
design.     Such    a    combination 
of  Puritan  and  artist  has  given 
to  American  literature  in  The 
Scarlet  Letter  a  masterpiece, 
somber   yet   beautiful,    ethical 
yet  poetic,  incorporating  both 
the  spirit  of  a  past  time  and 
the  lessons  of  an  eternal  pres 
ent.      This    incomparable    ro 
mance  is  unified  in  conception, 
symmetrical    in    form,    and 
nobly  simple  in  expression. 
Far  less  somber  than  The 
Scarlet  Letter  is  The 
House   of  the    Seven 
Gables.  This  has  been 
called  a  romance   of 
heredity,  because  the 
story  shows  the  ful- 
fillment    of    a    curse 

Upon     the     distant    de- 

scendants    of    the 

,  .  .    T      , 

wrongdoer,  old  Judge 
Pyncheon.  The  present  inhabitants  of  the  Pyncheon  man 
sion,  who  are  among  the  worst  sufferers,  are  Hepzibah  Pyn 
cheon  and  her  brother  Clifford.  Hawthorne's  pages  con 
tain  nothing  more  pathetic  than  the  picture  of  helplessness 
presented  by  these  two  innocent  souls,  bearing  a  burden 


CUSTOMERS  OF  ONE-CENT  SHOP,   "HOUSE  OF  THE 

SEVEN  GABLES'. 

(Copyright,  1898,  by  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.) 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE  21 7 

of  crime  not  their  own.  The  brightness  of  the  story 
comes  through  the  simple,  joyous,  home-making  nature  of 
Phoebe  Pyncheon.  She  it  is  who  can  bring  a  smile  to 
Clifford's  face  and  can  attract  custom  to  Hepzibah's 
cent  shop.  Hawthorne  never  loses  sight  of  his  purpose. 
The  curse  finds  its  last  victim,  and  the  whole  story  is  a 
slow  preparation  for  this  event.  The  scenes,  however, 
in  which  Phoebe,  that  "fair  maker  of  sunshine,"  reigns 
as  queen,  are  so  peaceful  and  attractive,  the  cent  shop, 
which  Hepzibah  is  forced  to  open  for  support,  offers  so 
many  opportunities  for  comic  as  well  as  pathetic  incidents, 
and  the  outcome  of  the  story  is  so  satisfactory  that  it  is 
the  brightest  of  all  Hawthorne's  long  romances. 

In  The  Marble  Faun,  Hawthorne's  last  complete  romance, 
the  Puritan  problem  of  sin  is  transplanted  to  Italian  soil. 
The  scene  is  laid  in  Rome,  where  the  art  of  Michael 
Angelo  and  Raphael,  the  secret  orders  of  the  Church, 
the  tragic  history  of  the  eternal  city,  with  its  catacombs 
and  ruins,  furnish  a  rich  and  varied  background  for  the 
story.  So  faithfully  indeed  are  the  galleries,  churches,  and 
historic  corners  of  Rome  described,  that  The  Marble 
Faun  has  served  as  a  guide  for  the  cultured  visitor.  This 
expression  of  opinion  by  the  late  A.  P.  Stanley  (1815- 
1881),  a  well-known  author  and  dean  of  Westminster 
Abbey,  is  worth  remembering :  "  I  have  read  it  seven 
times.  I  read  it  when  it  appeared,  as  I  read  everything 
from  that  English  master.  I  read  it  again  when  I  ex 
pected  to  visit  Rome,  then  when  on  the  way  to  Rome, 
again  while  in  Rome,  afterwards  to  revive  my  impressions 
of  Rome.  Recently  I  read  it  again  because  I  wanted  to." 
In  this  historic  setting,  Hawthorne  places  four  char 
acters  :  Donatello,  the  faun,  Miriam,  the  beautiful  and 
talented  young  artist,  Kenyon,  the  American  sculptor,  and 


218 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 


Hilda,  the  Puritan  maid  who  tends  the  lamp  of  the  Virgin  in 
her  tower  among  the  doves  and  makes  true  copies  of  the  old 
masters.  From  the  beginning  of  the  story  some  mysterious 
evil  power  is  felt,  and  this  power  gains  fuller  and  fuller  as 

cendency  over  the  characters. 
What  that  is  the  author 
does  not  say.  It  seems  the 
very  spirit  of  evil  itself  that 
twines  its  shadow  about  hu 
man  beings  and  crushes  them 
if  they  are  not  strong  enough 
to  resist. 

In  The  Scarlet  Letter  -it  was 
shown  that  the  moral  law 
forces  evildoers  to  pay  the 
last  farthing  of  the  debt  of 
sinning.  In  The  Marble 
Faun  the  effect  of  sin  in  de 
veloping  character  is  em 
phasized,  and  Donatello,  the 
thoughtless  creature  of  the 


n> 


-OGHESE,  ROME 

stages  of  growth  after  his  moral  nature  has  first  been  roused 
by  a  great  crime.  The  question  is  raised,  Can  the  soul  be 
developed  and  strengthened  by  sin  ?  The  problem  is 
handled  with  Hawthorne's  usual  moral  earnestness  of  pur 
pose,  and  is  expressed  in  his  easiest  and  most  flexible  style. 
Nevertheless  this  work  has  not  the  suppressed  intensity, 
completeness  of  outline,  and  artistic  symmetry  possessed 
by  The  Scarlet  Letter.  The  chief  defects  of  The  Marble 
Faun  are  a  vagueness  of  form,  a  distracting  variety  of 
scene,  and  a  lack  of  the  convincing  power  of  reality.  The 
continued  popularity  of  this  romance,  however,  is  justly 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE  219 

due  to  its  poetic  conception,  its  atmosphere  of  ancient 
mystery,  and  its  historic  Roman  background. 

The  Blithedale  Romance  and  the  cooperative  settlement 
described  in  it  were  suggested  to  Hawthorne  by  his  Brook 
Farm  experience,  although  he  disclaims  any  attempt  to 
present  an  actual  picture  of  that  community.  The  idea  of 
the  division  of  labor,  the  transcendental  conversations,  and 
many  of  the  incidents  owe  their  origin  to  his  sojourn  at 
Brook  Farm  (p.  166).  Although  The  BlitJiedale  Romance 
does  not  equal  the  three  romances  already  described,  it 
contains  one  character,  Zenobia,  who  is  the  most  original 
and  dramatic  of  Hawthorne's  men  and  women,  and  some 
scenes  which  are  as  powerful  as  any  drawn  by  him. 

General  Characteristics.  — L  Hawthorne  gave  the  Puritan 
to  literature.  This  achievement  suggests  Irving's  canoni 
zation  of  the  Knickerbockers  and  Cooper's  of  the  pioneer 
and  the  Indian.  Himself  a  Unitarian  and  out  of  sym 
pathy  with  the  Puritans'  creed,  Hawthorne  nevertheless 
says,  "  And  yet,  let  them  scorn  me  as  they  will,  strong 
traits  of  their  nature  have  intertwined  themselves  with 
mine."  He  and  they  had  the  same  favorite  subject,  —  the 
human  soul  in  its  relation  to  the  judgment  day.  He  could 
no  more  think  of  sin  unrelated  to  the  penalty,  than  of  a 
serpent  without  shape  or  color.  Unlike  many  modern 
novelists,  his  work  never  wanders  beyond  a  world  where 
the  Ten  Commandments  rule.  Critics  have  well  said  that 
he  never  painted  a  so-called  man  of  the  world,  because 
such  a  man,  by  Hawthorne's  definition,  would  really  be  a 
man  out  of  the  great  moral  world,  which  to  Hawthorne 
seemed  the  only  real  world. 

He  is  preeminently  a  writer  of  romance.  He  was  al 
ways  powerfully  influenced  by  such  romantic  materials  as 
may  be  found  in  the  world  ©f  witchcraft  and  the  super- 


220          THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

natural,  or  such  as  are  suggested  by  dim  foreshadowings  of 
evil  and  by  the  many  mysteries  for  which  human  philosophy 
does  not  account.  For  this  reason,  his  works  are  removed 
from  the  commonplace  and  enveloped  in  an  imaginative 
atmosphere.  He  subjects  his  use  of  these  romantic  materi 
als  —  the  unusual,  the  improbable,  and  the  supernatural  — 
to  only  one  touchstone.  He  is  willing  to  avail  himself  of 
these,  so  long  as  he  does  not,  in  his  own  phrase,  "  swerve 
aside  from  the  truth  of  the  human  heart." 

His  stories  are  frequently  symbolic.  He  selects  some 
object,  token,  or  utterance,  in  harmony  with  his  purpose, 
and  uses  it  as  a  symbol  to  prefigure  some  moral  action 
or  result.  The  symbol  may  be  an  embroidered  mantle,  in 
dicative  of  pride ;  a  butterfly,  typical  of  emergence  from  a 
dead  chrysalis  to  a  state  of  ideal  beauty ;  or  the  words  of 
a  curse,  which  prophesy  a  ghastly  death.  His  choice  of 
scene,  plot,  and  character  is  in  harmony  with  the  moral 
purpose  indicated  by  the  symbol.  Sometimes  this  pur 
pose  is  dimly  veiled  in  allegory,  but  even  when  his  stories 
are  sermons  in  allegory,  like  The  Snow  Image,  he  so  in 
vests  them  with  poetic  fancy  or  spiritual  beauty  as  to  make 
them  works  of  art.  His  extensive  use  of  symbolism  and 
allegory  has  been  severely  criticized.  It  is  unfortunate 
that  he  did  not  learn  earlier  in  life  what  The  Scarlet  Letter 
should  have  taught  him,  that  he  did  not  need  to  rely  on 
these  supports.  He  becomes  one  of  the  great  masters 
when  he  paints  character  from  the  inside  with  a  touch  so 
vivid  and  compelling  that  the  symbolism  and  the  allegory 
vanish  like  a  dissolving  picture  and  reveal  human  forms. 
When  he  has  breathed  into  them  the  creator's  breath  of 
life,  he  walks  with  them  hand  in  hand  in  this  lost  Eden. 
He  ascends  the  pillory  with  Hester  Prynne,  and  writhes 
with  Arthur  Dimmesdale's  agony.  He  plays  on  the  sea- 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE  221 

shore  with  little  Pearl.  He  shares  Hepzibah'  Pyncheon's 
solitude  and  waits  on  the  customers  in  the  cent  shop  with 
Phoebe,  He  eats  two  dromedaries  and  a  gingerbread  loco 
motive  with  little  Ned  Higgins. 

Hawthorne  did  not  care  much  for  philosophical  systems, 
and  never  concerned  himself  with  the  intricacies  of  tran 
scendentalism.  Yet  he  was  affected  by  that  philosophy, 
as  is  shown  by  his  personal  isolation  and  .that  of  his  char 
acters.  .  His  intense  belief  in  individuality  is  also  a  tran 
scendental  doctrine.  He  holds  that  the  individual  is  his 
own  jailer,  his  own  liberator,  the  preserver  or  loser  of 
his  own  Eden.  Moral  regeneration  seems  to  him  an 
individual,  not  a  social,  affair. 

His  style  is  easy,  exact,  flowing,  and  it  shows  the  skill  of 
a  literary  artist.  He  never  strains  after  effect,  never  uses 
excessive  ornament,  never  appears  hurried.  There  was  not 
another  nineteenth-century  prose  master  on  either  side  of 
the  Atlantic  who  could  in  fewer  words  or  simpler  language 
have  secured  the  effect  produced  by  The  Scarlet  Letter. 
He  wished  to  be  impressive  in  describing  Phcebe,  that 
sunbeam  in  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables,  but  he  says 
simply  :  — 

"  She  was  like  a  prayer,  offered  up  in  the  homeliest  beauty  of  one's 
mother  tongue." 

Sincerity  is  the  marked  characteristic  of  this  simplicity  in 
style,  and  it  makes  an  impression  denied  to  the  mere  striver 
after  effect,  however  cunning  his  art. 

A  writer  of  imperishable  romances,  a  sympathetic  re- 
vealer  of  the    soul,   a  great  moralist,   a  master  of  style, 
Hawthorne  is  to  be  classed  with  the  greatest  masters  of 
English  fiction.     His  artist's  hand 
"  Wrought  in  a  sad  sincerity ; 
Himself  from  God  he  could  not  free  " 


222 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW,  1807-1882 

Life. — Longfellow,  the  most  widely  read  of  American 
poets,  was  born  in  Portland,  Maine,  in  1807.  His  father 
was  a  Harvard  graduate,  and  his  mother,  like  Bryant's,  was 
descended  from  John  and  Priscilla  Alden  of  Plymouth. 
Longfellow,  when  three  years  old,  began  to  go  to  school, 
and,  like  Bryant,  he  published  at  the  ripe  age  of  thirteen 
his  first  poem,  Battle  of  Lovell 's  Pond,  which  appeared  in 
the  Portland  Gazette. 

Portland  made  a  great  impression  on  the  boy.  To  his 
early  life  there  is  due  the  love  of  the  sea,  which  colors  so 


HENRY  WADSWORTH   LONGFELLOW 


223 


much  of  his  poetry.     In  his  poem,  My  Lost   Youth,  he 
says: — 

"  I  remember  the  black  wharves  and  the  slips, 

And  the  sea  tides  tossing  free ; 
And  Spanish  sailors  with  bearded  lips, 
And  the  beauty  and  mystery  of  the  ships, 

And  the  magic  of  the  sea." 

He  went  to  Bowdoin  College,  Maine,  where  he  had 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne  for  a  classmate.  In  his  senior  year 
Longfellow  wrote  to  his  father,  "  I  most  eagerly  aspire 
after  future  eminence  in  literature  ;  my  whole  soul  burns 
most  ardently  for  it,  and  every  earthly  thought  centers  in 
it."  His  father  replied,  "There  is  not  enough  wealth  in 
this  country  to  afford  encouragement  and  patronage  to 
merely  literary  men.  And  as  you  have  not  had  the  fortune 
...  to  be  born  rich,  you  must  adopt  a  profession  which 
will  afford  you  subsistence  as  well  as  reputation."  The  son 
then  chose  the  law,  saying,  "  This  will  support  my  real  exist 
ence;  literature,  my  ideal  one."  Bowdoin  College,  however, 
came  to  the  rescue,  and  offered  him  the  professorship  of 
modern  languages  on  condition  that  he  would  go  abroad 
for  study.  He  accepted  the  offer,  and  remained  abroad 
three  years.  His  travel  sketches  on  this  trip  were  pub 
lished  in  book  form  in  1835,  under  the  title  of  Outre-Mer: 
A  Pilgrimage  beyond  the  Sea.  This  is  suggestive  of  the 
Sketch  Book  (p.  119),  the  earliest  book  which  he  remem 
bered  reading.  After  five  years'  service  at  Bowdoin,  he 
accepted  Harvard's  offer  of  the  professorship  of  modern 
languages  and  again  went  abroad.  This  journey  was  sad 
dened  by  the  death  of  his  first  wife.  His  prose  romance; 
Hyperion,  was  one  of  the  fruits  of  this  sojourn  abroad.  The 
second  Mrs.  Longfellow,  whose  real  name  was  Frances 
Appleton,  appears  in  this  book  under  the  name  of  Mary 


224  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

Ashburton.  Her  father  bought  the  Craigie  House,  which 
had  been  Washington's  headquarters  in  Cambridge,  and  gave 
it  to  Longfellow  as  a  residence.  In  1854,  after  eighteen 
years'  teaching  at  Harvard,  he  resigned,  for  his  means  were 
then  ample  to  enable  him  to  devote  his  full  time  to  literature. 
From  1854  until  1861  he  lived  in  reality  the  ideal  exist 
ence  of  his  youthful  dreams.  In  1861  his  wife's  summer 


LONGFELLOW'S    HOME,   CRAIGIE   HOUSE,   CAMBRIDGE 

dress  caught  fire,  and  although  he  struggled  heroically  to 
save  her,  she  died  the  next  day,  and  he  himself  was  so 
severely  burned  that  he  could  not  attend  her  funeral. 
Years  afterwards  he  wrote :  — 

"  Here  in  this  room  she  died  ;  and  soul  more  white 
Never  through  martyrdom  of  fire  was  led 
To  its  repose." 

Like  Bryant,  he  sought  refuge  in  translating.  Longfellow 
chose  Dante,  and  gave  the  world  the  fine  rendering  of  his 
Divine  Comedy  (1867). 

Outside  of  these  domestic  sorrows,  Longfellow's  life  was 


HENRY  WADS  WORTH  LONGFELLOW  225 

happy  and  prosperous.  His  home  was  blessed  with  at 
tractive  children.  Loved  by  friends,  honored  by  foreigners, 
possessed  of  rare  sweetness  and  lovableness  of  disposition, 
he  became  the  most  popular  literary  man  in  America.  He 
desired  freedom  from  turmoil  and  from  constant  struggling 
for  daily  bread,  and  this  freedom  came  to  him  in  fuller 
measure  than  to  most  men. 

The  children  of  the  country  felt  that  he  was  their  own 
special  poet.  The  public  schools  of  the  United  States 
celebrated  his  seventy-fifth  birthday,  February  27,  1882. 
Less  than  a  month  later  he  died,  and  was  laid  to  rest  in 
Mount  Auburn  cemetery,  Cambridge. 

" Laureate  of  the  Common  Human  Heart." — "God  must 
love  the  common  people,"  said  President  Lincoln,  "be 
cause  he  has  made  so 
many  of  them."  Long 
fellow  wrote  for  "the 
common  human  heart." 
In  him  the  common 
people  found  a  poet 
who  could  gild  the  com 
monplace  things  of  life 
and  make  them  seem 
more  attractive,  more 
easily  borne,  more  im 
portant,  more  full  of 
meaning. 

In  his  first  published 
volume  of  poems,  Voices 
of  the  Night  (1839),  he 
shows  his  aim  distinctly 
in  such  poems  as  A 
Psalm  of  Life.  Its  lines  are  the  essence  of  simplicity. 


226  THE   NEW   ENGLAND    GROUP 

but  they  have  instilled  patience  and  noble  purpose  into 
many  a  humble  human  soul.  The  two  stanzas  beginning 

"  Life  is  real!  Life  is  earnest," 
and 

"  Lives  of  great  men  all  remind  us," 

can  be  repeated  by  many  who  know  but  little  poetry, 
and  these  very  stanzas,  as  well  as  many  others  like  them, 
have  affected  the  lives  of  large  numbers  of  people.  Those 
born  a  generation  ago  not  infrequently  say  that  the  follow 
ing  stanza  from  The  Ladder  of  St.  Augustine  (1850)  has 
been  the  stepping-stone  to  their  success  in  life :  — 
"  The  heights  by  great  men  reached  and  kept 

Were  not  attained  by  sudden  flight, 
But  they,  while  their  companions  slept, 

Were  toiling  upward  in  the  night." 

His  poem,  The  Rainy  Day  (1841),  has  developed  in  many 
a  person  the  qualities  of  patience,  resignation,  and  hope 
fulness.  Repetition  makes  the  majority  of  things  seem, 
commonplace,  but  even  repetition  has  not  robbed  lines  like 
these  of  their  power  :  — 

"  Be  still,  sad  heart !  and  cease  repining, 

Behind  the  clouds  is  the  sun  still  shining ; 

Thy  fate  is  the  common  fate  of  all ; 

Into  each  life  some  rain  must  fall, 

Some  days  must  be  dark  and  dreary." 

Nine  days  before  he  died,  he  wrote  his  last  lines  with 
the  same  simplicity  and  hopefulness  of  former  days  :  — 
"  Out  of  the  shadows  of  night 
The  world  rolls  into  light. 
It  is  daybreak  everywhere." 

As  we  examine  these  typical  poems,  we  shall  find  that 
all  of  them  appeal  to  our  common  experiences  or  aspira 
tions,  and  that  all  are  expressed  in  that  simple  language 
which  no  one  need  read  twice  to  understand. 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW 


227 


Ballads,  —  Longfellow  knew  how  to  tell  a  story  which 
preserved  the  simplicity  and  the  vigor  of  the  old  ballad 
makers.  His  The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus  (1839)  starts  in 
the  true  fashion  to  make  us  wish  to  finish  the  tale :  — 

"  It  was  the  schooner  Hesperus, 
That  sailed  the  wintry  sea ; 
And  the  skipper  had  taken  his  little  daughter 
To  bear  him  company." 

Longfellow  says  that  he  wrote  this  ballad  between  twelve 
and  three  in  the  morning  and  that  the  composition  did  not 
come  to  him  by  lines,  but  by  stanzas. 

Even  more  vigorous  is  his  ballad  of  The  Skeleton  in 
Armor  (1840).  The  Viking' hero  of  the  tale,  like  young 
Lochinvar,  won  the  heart  of  the  heroine,  the  blue-eyed 
daughter  of  a  Norwegian  prince. 

"WhenofoldHildebrand 
I  asked  his  daughter's  hand, 
Mute  did  the  minstrels  stand 
To  hear  my  story." 

The  Viking's  suit  was  denied.  He  put  the  maiden  on  his 
vessel  before  he  was  detected  and  pursued  by  her  father. 
Those  who  think  that  the  gentle  Longfellow  could  not 
write  poetry  as  energetic  as  Scott's  Lochinvar  should 
read  the  following  stanza  :  — 

"  As  with  his  wings  aslant, 
Sails  the  fierce  cormorant, 
Seeking  some  rocky  haunt, 

With  his  prey  laden, — 
So  toward  the  open  main, 
Beating  to  sea  again, 
Through  the  wild  hurricane, 
Bore  I  the  maiden." 

Those  who  are  fond  of  this  kind  of  poetry  should  turn 
to  Longfellow's  Tales  of  a  Wayside  7««(i863),  where  they 


228  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

will  find  such  favorites  as  Paul  Revere  s  Ride  and  The 
Birds  of  Killingworth. 

Longer  Poems.  —  No  other  American  poet  has  equaled 
Longfellow's  longer  narrative  poems.  Bryant  and  Poe 
would  not  attempt  long  poems.  The  flights  of  Whittier 
and  Emerson  were  comparatively  short.  It  is  unusually 
difficult  to  write  long  poems  that  will  be  read.  In  the 
case  of  Evangeline  (1847),  Hiawatha  (1855),  and  The 
Courtship  of  Miles  Standish  (1858),  Longfellow  proved  an 
exception  to  the  rule. 

Evangeline  is  based  upon  an  incident  that  occurred 
during  the  French  and  Indian  War.  In  1755  a  force  of 
British  and  colonial  troops  sailed  from  Boston  to  Acadia 
(Nova  Scotia)  and  deported  the  French  inhabitants. 
Hawthorne  heard  the  story,  how  the  English  put  Evange 
line  and  her  lover  on  different  ships  and  how  she  began 
her  long,  sad  search  for  him.  When  Hawthorne  and 
Longfellow  were  discussing  this  one  day  at  dinner  at  the 
Craigie  House,  the  poet  said,  "  If  you  really  do  not  want 
this  incident  for  a  tale,  let  me  have  it  for  a  poem."  Haw 
thorne  consented  to  give  his  classmate  all  poetical  rights 
to  the  story. 

Evangeline  is  the  tale  of  a  love  "  that  hopes  and  endures 
and  is  patient."  The  metrical  form,  dactylic  hexameter, 
is  one  that  few  of  our  poets  have  successfully  used,  and 
many  have  thought  it  wholly  unfitted  to  English  verse. 
Longfellow  has  certainly  disproved  their  theory,  for  his 
success  with  this  meter  is  pronounced.  The  long,  flowing 
lines  seem  to  be  exactly  adapted  to  give  the  scenes  the 
proper  atmosphere  and  to  narrate  the  heroine's  weary 
search.  The  poem  became  immediately  popular.  It  was 
the  first  successful  long  narrative  poem  to  appear  in  the 
United  States.  Whittier  had  studied  the  same  subject, 


HENRY    WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW 


22Q 


bat  had  delayed  making  verses  on  it  until  he  found  that  it 
had  been  suggested  to  Longfellow.  In  a  complimentary 
review  of  the  poem,  Whittier  said,  "  Longfellow  was  just 
the  one  to  write  it.  If  I  had  attempted  it,  I  should  have 
spoiled  the  artistic  effect  of  the  poem  by  my  indignation 
at  the  treatment  of  the  exiles  by  the  colonial  government." 
From  the  moment  that  Evangeline  appears,  our  interest 
does  not  lag. 

"  Fair  was  she  to  behold,  that  maiden  of  seventeen  summers. 

When  she  had  passed,  it  seemed  like  the  ceasing  of  exquisite  music." 

The  imagery  of  the  poem  is1  pleasing,  no  matter  whether 
we  are  listening  to  "  the  murmuring 
pines  and  the  hemlocks,"  the  softly 
sounding  Angel  us,  the  gossiping 
looms,  the  whir  of  wings  in  the 
drowsy  air,  or  seeing  the 
barns  bursting  with  hay,  |h 
the  air  filled  with  a  dreamy 
and  mystical  light, 
the  forest  arrayed 
in  its  robes  of  rus 
set  and  scarlet  and 
yellow,  and  the  stars, 
those  "  forget-me- 
nots  of  the  angels,"  blossoming  "in  the  infinite  meadows 
of  heaven." 

The  Song  of  Hiawatha  was  begun  by  Longfellow  in  1854, 
after  resigning  the  professorship  of  modern  languages  at 
Harvard.  He  seemed  to  revel  in  his  new  freedom,  and  in 
less  than  a  year  he  had  produced  the  poem  by  which  he 
will  probably  be  longest  known  to  posterity.  He  studied 
Schoolcraft's  Algic  Researches  and  the  same  author's 


LONGFELLOW'S  STUDY 


230 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


History,  Condition,  and  Prospects  of  the  Indian  Tribes  of 

tJie  United  States^  and 
familiarized  himself  with 
Indian  legends.  The 
simplicity  of  Longfel 
low's  nature  and  his 
ability  as  a  poetic  artist 
seemed  rarely  suited  to 
deal  with  these  tradi 
tions  of  a  race  that  never 
wholly  emerged  from 
childhood. 

Longfellow's  invitation 
to  hear  this  Song  does 
not  include  all,  but  only 


HIAWATHA 


"  Ye  whose  hearts  are  fresh  and  simple, 
Who  have  faith  in  God  and  nature." 

Those  who  accept  this  invitation  will  rejoice  to  accom 
pany  Shawondasee,  the  South- Wind,  when  he  sends  north 
ward  the  robin,  bluebird,  and  swallow.  They  will  also 
wish  to  go  with  Rabibonokka,  the  North-Wind,  as  he 
paints  the  autumn  woods  with  scarlet  and  sends  the  snow- 
flakes  through  the  forests.  They  will  be  glad  to  be  a  child 
with  Hiawatha,  to  hear  again  the  magical  voices  of  the 
forest,  the  whisper  of  the  pines,  the  lapping  of  the  waters, 
the  hooting  of  the  owl,  to  learn  of  every  bird  and  beast  its 
language,  and  especially  to  know  the  joy  of  calling  them 
all  brothers.  They  will  gladly  accompany  Hiawatha  to  the 
land  of  the  Dacotahs,  when  he  woos  Minnehaha,  Laugh 
ing  Water,  and  hears  Qwaissa,  the  bluebird,  singing:  — 

"Happy  are  you,  Hia\Matha, 
Having  such  a  wife  to  love  you!" 


HENRY   WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW  231 

But  the  guests  will  be  made  of  stern  stuff  if  their  eyes  do 
not  moisten  when  they  hear  Hiawatha  calling  in  the  midst 
of  the  famine  of  the  cold  and  cruel  winter :  — 

"Give  your  children  food,  O  father! 
Give  us  food  or  we  must  perish! 
Give  me  food  for  Minnehaha, 
For  my  dying  Minnehaha." 

Hiawatha  overflows  with  the  elemental  spirit  of  child 
hood.  The  sense  of  companionship  with  all  earth's 
creatures,  the  mystery  of  life  and  of  Minnehaha's  depar 
ture  to  the  Kingdom  of  Ponemah,  make  a  strong  appeal  to 
all  who  remember  childhood's  Eden. 

The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish  (1858),  in  the  same 
meter  as  Evangeline,  is  a  romantic  tale,  the  scene  of 
which  is  laid 

"  In  the  Old  Colony  days,  in  Plymouth,  the  land  of  the  Pilgrims." 

We  see  Miles  Standish,  the  incarnation  of  the  Puritan 
church  militant,  as  he 

"...  wistfully  gazed  on  the  landscape, 

Washed  with  a  cold  gray  mist,  the  vapory  breath  of  the  east-wind, 
Forest  and  meadow  and  hill,  and  the  steel-blue  rim  of  the  ocean, 
Lying  silent  and  sad  in  the  afternoon  shadows  and  sunshine." 

Priscilla  Mullins,  the  heroine  of  the  poem,  is  a  general 
favorite.  Longfellow  and  Bryant  were  both  proud  to 
trace  their  descent  from  her.  This  poem  introduces  her 

"  Seated  beside  her  wheel,  and  the  carded  wool  like  a  snow-drift 
Piled  at  her  knee,  her  white  hands  feeding  the  ravenous  spindle, 
While  with  her  foot  on  the  treadle  she  guided  the  wheel  in  its 
motion. 

She,  the  Puritan  girl,  in  the  solitude  of  the  forest, 

Making  the  humble  house  and  the  modest  apparel  of  homespun 

Beautiful  with  her  beautv,  and  rich  with  the  wealth  of  her  being! " 


232  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

This  story  has  more  touches  of  humor  than  either  Evan- 
geline  or  Hiawatha.  Longfellow  uses  with  fine  effect  the 
contradiction  between  the  preaching  of  the  bluff  old  cap 
tain,  that  you  must  do  a  thing  yourself  if  you  want  it  well 
done,  and  his  practice  in  sending  by  John  Alden  an  offer 
of  marriage  to  Priscilla.  Her  reply  has  become  classic : 

"Why  don't  you  speak  for  yourself,  John?" 

Longfellow's  Christus,  a  Mystery,  was  the  title  finally 
given  by  him  to  three  apparently  separate  poems,  pub 
lished  under  the  titles,  The  Golden  Legend  (1851),  The 
Divine  Tragedy  (\%J\\  and  The  New  England  Tragedies 
(1868).  His  idea  was  to  represent  the  origin,  the  medie 
val  aspect,  and  the  Puritan  conception  of  Christianity  —  a 
task  not  well  suited  to  Longfellow's  genius.  The  Golden 
Legend  is  the  most  poetic,  but  The  New  England  Tragedies 
is  the  most  likely  to  be  read  in  future  years,  not  for  its 
poetic  charms,  but  because  it  presents  two  phases  of  New 
England's  colonial  history,  the  persecution  of  the  Quakers 
and  the  Salem  witchcraft  delusion. 

General  Characteristics.  —  An  eminent  Scotch  educator 
says  that  Longfellow  has  probably  taught  more  people  to 
love  poetry  than  any  other  nineteenth-century  poet,  Eng 
lish  or  American.  He  is  America's  best  and  most  widely 
read  story-teller  in  verse.  Success  in  long  narrative  poems 
is  rare  in  any  literature.  Probably  the  majority  of  critics 
would  find  it  difficult  to  agree  on  any  English  poet  since 
Chaucer  who  has  surpassed  Longfellow  in  this  field.  • 

He  has  achieved  the  unusual  distinction  of  making  the 
commonplace  attractive  and  beautiful.  He  is  the  poet  of 
the  home,  of  the  common  people,  and  of  those  common 
objects  in  nature  which  in  his  verses  convey  a  lesson  to 
all.  He  has  proved  a  moral  stimulus  to  his  age  and  he  has 


HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW  233 

further  helped  to  make  the  world  kindlier  and  its  troubles 
more  easily  borne.  This  was  his  message :  — 

"  Bear  through  sorrow,  wrong  and  ruth 
In  thy  heart  the  dew  of  youth, 
On  thy  lips  the  smile  of  truth."  ,    , 

His  poetry  is  usually  more  tinctured  with  feeling  than 
with  thought.  Diffuseness  is  his  greatest  fault.  The 
Sonnets  of  his  later  years  and  an  occasional  poem,  like 
Morituri  Salutamus  (1875),  show  more  condensation,  but 
parts  of  even  Hiawatha  would  be  much  improved  if  told 
in  fewer  words. 

Some  complain  that  Longfellow  finds  in  books  too  much 
of  the  source  of  his  inspiration ;  that,  although  he  did  not 
live  far  from  Evangeline's  country,  he  never  visited  it,  and 
that  others  had  to  tell  him  to  substitute  pines  or  hemlocks 
for  chestnut  trees.  Many  critics  have  found  fault  with  his 
poetry  because  it  does  not  offer  "  sufficient  obstruction  to 
the  stream  of  thought,"  — because  it  does  not  make  the  mind 
use  its  full  powers  in  wrestling  with  the  meaning.  It  is  a 
mistake,  however,  to  underestimate  the  virtues  of  clearness 
and  simplicity.  Many  great  men  who  have  been  unsuc 
cessful  in  their  struggle  to  secure  these  qualities  have 
consequently  failed  to  reach  the  ear  of  the  world  with  a 
message.  While  other  poets  should  be  read  for  mental 
development,  the  large  heart  of  the  world  still  finds  a  place 
for  Longfellow,  who  has  voiced  its  hopes  that 

"...  the  night  shall  be  filled  with  music, 

And  the  cares  that  infest  the  day, 
Shall  fold  their  tents  like  the  Arabs, 
And  as  silently  steal  away." 

Like  most  Puritans,  Longfellow  is  usually  over-anxious  to 
teach  a  lesson ;  but  the  world  must  learn,  and  no  one  has 
surpassed  him  as  a  poetic  teacher  of  the  masses. 


234 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


JOHN  GREENLEAF  WHITTIER,  1807  1892 

Life.  —  Whittier  says  that  the  only  unusual  circumstance 
about  the  migration  of  his  Puritan  ancestor  to  New  Eng 
land  in  1638  was  the  fact  that  he  brought  over  with  him  a 
hive  of  bees.  The  descendants  of  this  very  hive  probably 
suggested  the  poem,  Telling  the  Bees,  for  it  was  an  old 
English  custom  to  go  straightway  to  the  hive  and  tell  the 
bees  whenever  a  member  of  the  family  died.  It  was  be 
lieved  that  thev  would  swarm  and  seek  another  home  if 


JOHN   GREENLEAF   WHITTIER  235 

this  information  was  withheld.  The  poet  has  made  both 
the  bees  and  the  snows  of  his  northern  home  famous.  He 
was  born  in  1807  in  the  same  house  that  his  first  American 
ancestor  built  in  East  Haverhill,  about  thirty-two  miles 
northwest  of  Boston.  The  Whittiers  were  farmers  who 
for  generations  had  wrung  little  more  than  a  bare  subsist 
ence  from  the  soil.  The  boy's  frail  health  was  early 
broken  by  the  severe  labor.  He  had  to  milk  seven  cows, 
plow  with  a  yoke  of  oxen,  and  keep  busy  from  dawn  until 
dark. 

Unlike  the  other  members  of  the  New  England  group  of 
authors,  Whittier  never  went  to  college.  He  received  only 
the  scantiest  education  in  the  schools  near  his  home.  The 
family  was  so  poor  that  he  had  to  work  as  a  cobbler,  mak 
ing  slippers  at  eight  cents  a  pair,  in  order  to  attend  the 
Haverhill  academy  for  six  months.  He  calculated  his  ex 
penses  so  exactly  that  he  had  just  twenty-five  cents  left 
at  the  end  of  the  term. 

Two  events  in  his  youth  had  strong  influence  on  his 
future  vocation.  When  he  was  fourteen,  his  school-teacher 
read  aloud  to  the  family  from  the  poems  of  Robert  Burns. 
The  boy  was  entranced,  and,  learning  that  Burns  had  been 
merely  a  plowman,  felt  that  there  was  hope  for  himself. 
He  borrowed  the  volume  of  poems  and  read  them  again 
and  again.  Of  this  experience,  he  says :  "  This  was  about 
the  first  poetry  I  had  ever  read  (with  the  exception  of  the 
Bible,  of  which  I  had  been  a  close  student)  and  it  had  a 
lasting  influence  upon  me.  I  began  to  make  rhymes  my 
self  and  to  imagine  stories  and  adventures."  The  second 
event  was  the  appearance  in  print  of  some  ©f  his  verses, 
which  his  sister  had,  unknown  to  him,  sent  to  a  Newbury- 
port  paper  edited  by  William  Lloyd  Garrison.  The  great 
abolitionist  thought  enough  of  the  poetry  to  ride  out  to 


236          THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

Whittier's  home  and  urge  him  to  get  an  education.     This 
event  made  an  indelible  impression  on  the  lad's  memory. 

Realizing  that  his  health  would  not  allow  him'  to  make 
his  living  on  a  farm,  he  tried  teaching  school,  but,  like 
Thoreau,  found  that  occupation  distasteful.  Through 
Garrison's  influence,  Whittier  at  the  age  of  twenty-one 
procured  an  editorial  position  in  Boston.  At  various  times 
he  served  as  editor  on  more  than  half  a  dozen  different 
papers,  until  his  own  health  or  his  father's  brought  him 
back  to  the  farm.  Such  occupation  taught  him  how  to 
write  prose,  of  which  he  had  produced  enough  at  the  time 
of  his  death  to  fill  three  good-sized  volumes,  but  his  prose 
did  not  secure  the  attention  given  to  his  verse.  While  in 
Hartford,  editing  The  New  England  Review,  he  fell  in  love 
with  Miss  Cornelia  Russ,  and  a  few  days  before  he  finally 
left  the  city,  he  wrote  a  proposal  to  her  in  three  hundred 
words  of  wandering  prose.  Had  he  expressed  his  feelings 
in  one  of  his  inimitable  ballads,  it  is  possible  that  he  might 
have  been  accepted,  for  neither  she  nor  he  ever  married. 
In  the  year  of  her  death,  he  wrote  his  poem,  Memories, 
which  recounts  some  recollections  earlier  than  his  Hartford 
experiences :  — 

"  A  beautiful  and  happy  girl, 

With  step  as  light  as  summer  air, 
Eyes  glad  with  smilas,  and  brow  of  pearl 
Shadowed  by  many  a  careless  curl 

Of  unconfined  and  flowing  hair; 
A  seeming  child  in  everything, 

Save  thoughtful  brow  and  ripening  charms, 
As  nature  wears  the  smile  of  Spring 

When  sinking  into  Summer's  arms." 

He  was  a  Quaker  and  he  came  to  Hartford  in  the  home 
spun  clothes  of  the  cut  of  his  sect.  He  may  have  been 


JOHN   GREENLEAF   WHITTIER 


237 


thinking  of  Miss  Russ  and  wondering  whether  theology 
had  anything  to  do  with  her  refusal,  when  in  after  years  he 
wrote  :  — 


"  Thine  the  Genevan's  stern 
est  creed, 

While  answers  to  my  spirit's 
need 

The  Derby  dalesman's  sim 
ple  truth." 

As  Whittier  was  a 
skillful  politician,  he  had 
hopes  of  making  a  name 
for  himself  in  politics 
as  well  as  in  literature. 
He  was  chosen  to  repre 
sent  his  district  in  the 
state  legislature  and 
there  is  little  doubt  that 
he  would  have  been  sent 
to  the  national  congress 
later,  had  he  not  taken 
a  step  which  for  a  long  time  shut  off  all  avenues  of  prefer 
ment.  In  1833  he  joined  the  abolitionists.  This  step  had 
very  nearly  the  same  effect  on  his  fortunes  as  the  public 
declaration  of  an  adherence  to  the  doctrines  of  anarchy 
would  to-day  have  on  a  man  similarly  situated.  The  best 
magazines  at  the  North  would  not  open  their  pages  to  him. 
He  was  even  mobbed,  and  the  office  of  an  anti-slavery 
paper,  which  he  was  editing  in  Philadelphia,  was  sacked. 
He  wrote  many  poems  to  aid  the  abolition  cause.  These 
were  really  editorials  expressed  in  verse,  which  caught  the 
attention  in  a  way  denied  to  prose.  For  more  than  thirty 
years  such  verse  constituted  the  most  of  his  poetical  pro- 


WHITTIER    AT  THE    AGE   OF  TWENTY-NINE 


238  THE  NEW  ENGLAND    GROUP 

duction.  Lowell  noticed  that  the  Quaker  doctrine  of  peace 
did  not  deter  Whittier  from  his  vigorous  attack  on  slavery. 
In  A  Fable  for  Critics  (1848),  Lowell  asks:  — 

«...     O  leather-clad  Fox? 
Can  that  be  thy  son,  in  the  battle's  mid  din, 
Preaching  brotherly  love  and  then  driving  it  in 
To  the  brain  of  the  tough  old  Goliath  of  sin, 
With  the  smoothest  of  pebbles  from  Castaly's  spring 
Impressed  on  his  hard  moral  sense  with  a  sling?" 

Whittier  did,  however,  try  to  keep  the  spirit  of  brotherly 
love  warm  throughout  his  life.  He  always  preferred  to 
win  his  cause  from  an  enemy  peacefully.  When  he  was 
charged  with  hating  the  people  of  the  South,  he  wrote :  — 

"  I  was  never  an  enemy  to  the  South  or  the  holders  of  slaves.  I  in 
herited  from  my  Quaker  ancestry  hatred  of  slavery,  but  not  of  slave 
holders.  To  every  call  of  suffering  or  distress  in  the  South,  I  have 
promptly  responded  to  the  extent  of  my  ability.  I  was  one  of  the  very 
first  to  recognize  the  rare  gift  of  the  Carolinian  poet  Timrod,  and  I  was 
the  intimate  friend  of  the  lamented  Paul  H.  Hayne,  though  both  wrote 
fiery  lyrics  against  the  North." 

With  a  few  striking  exceptions,  his  most  popular  poems 
were  written  after  the  close  of  the  Civil  War.  His  greatest 
poem,  Snow-Bound,  was  published  in  the  year  after  the 
cessation  of  hostilities  (1866).  His  last  thirty  years  were 
a  time  of  comparative  calm.  He  wrote  poetry  as  the  spirit 
moved  him.  He  had  grown  to  be  loved  everywhere  at  the 
North,  and  his  birthday,  like  Longfellow's,  was  the  occa 
sion  for  frequent  celebrations.  For  years  before  the  close 
of  the  war,  in  fact  until  Snow-Bound  appeared,  he  was 
very  poor,  but  the  first  edition  of  that  poem  brought  him 
in  ten  thousand  dollars,  and  after  that  he  was  never  again 
troubled  by  poverty.  In  a  letter  written  in  1866,  he 
says : — 


JOHN   GREENLEAF   WHITTIER  239 

"  If  my  health  allowed  me  to  write  I  could  make  money  easily  now, 
as  my  anti-slavery  reputation  does  not  injure  me  in  the  least,  at  the 
present  time.  For  twenty  years  I  was  shut  out  from  the  favor  of  book 
sellers  and  magazine  editors,  but  I  was  enabled  by  rigid  economy  to 
live  in  spite  of  them." 

His  fixed  home  for  almost  all  of  his  life  was  in  the  valley 
of  the  Merrimac  River,  at  East  Haverhill,  until  1836,  and 


k    .  I 

KITCHEN    FIREPLACE    IN   WHITTIER'S    HOME,    EAST   HAVERHILL,   MASS. 

then  at  Amesbury,  only  a  few  miles  east  of  his  birthplace. 
He  died  in  1892  and  was  buried  in  the  Amesbury  cemetery. 
Poetry.  —  Although  Whittier  wrote  much  forcible  anti- 
slavery  verse,  most  of  this  has  already  been  forgotten, 
because  it  was  directly  fashioned  to  appeal  to  the  interests 
of  the  time.  One  of  the  strongest  of  these  poems  is 
Ichabod  (1850),  a  bitter  arraignment  of  Daniel  Webster, 
because  Whittier  thought  that  the  great  orator's  Seventh 


240          THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

of  March  Speech  of  that  year  advised  a  compromise  with 
slavery.  Webster  writhed  under  Whittier's  criticism  more 
than  under  that  of  any  other  man. 

"...     from  those  great  eyes 

The  soul  has  fled : 
When  faith  is  lost,  when  honor  dies 
The  man  is  dead!" 

Thirty  years  later,  Whittier,  feeling  that  perhaps  Webster 
merely  intended  to  try  to  save  the  Union  and  do  away 
with  slavery  without  a  conflict,  wrote  The  Lost  Occasion, 
in  which  he  lamented  the  too  early  death  of  the  great 
orator :  — 

"  Some  die  too  late  and  some  too  soon, 

At  early  morning,  heat  of  noon, 

Or  the  chill  evening  twilight.     Thou, 

Whom  the  rich  heavens  did  so  endow 

With  eyes  of  power  and  Jove's  own  brow, 

Too  soon  for  us,  too  soon  for  thee, 
Beside  thy  lonely  Northern  sea, 
Where  long  and  low  the  marsh-lands  spread, 
Laid  wearily  down  thy  august  head." 

Whittier  is  emphatically  the  poet  of  New  England. 
His  verses  which  will  live  the  longest  are  those  which 
spring  directly  from  its  soil.  His  poem  entitled  The  Bare 
foot  Boy  tells  how  the  typical  New  England  farmer's  lad 

acquired  :  — 

"  Knowledge  never  learned  of  schools, 
Of  the  wild  bee's  morning  chase, 
Of  the  wild  flower's  time  and  place, 
Flight  of  fowl  and  habitude 
Of  the  tenants  of  the  wood." 

His  greatest  poem,  the  one  by  which  he  will  probably 
be  chiefly  known  to  posterity,  is  Snow-Bound,  which  de 
scribes  the  life  of  a  rural  New  England  household.  At 


JOHN   GREENLEAF  WHITTIER 


241 


the  beginning  of  this  poem  of  735  lines,  the  coming  of  the 
all-enveloping  snowstorm,  with  its  "  ghostly  finger  tips  of 
sleet "  on  the  window-panes,  is  the  central  event,  but  we 
soon  realize  that  this  storm  merely  serves  to  focus  intensely 
the  New  England  life  with  which  he  was  familiar.  The 
household  is  shut  in  from  the  outside  world  by  the  snow, 
and  there  is  nothing  else  to  distract  the  attention  from  the 
picture  of  isolated  Puritan  life.  There  is  not  another  poet 


WHITTIER'S    BIRTHPLACE   IN   WINTER   (SCENE  OF   "SNOW-BOUND") 

in  America  who  has  produced  such  a  masterpiece  under 
such  limitations.  One  prose  writer,  Hawthorne,  in  The 
Scarlet  Letter,  had  indeed  taken  even  more  unpromising 
materials  and  achieved  one  of  the  greatest  successes  in 
English  romance,  but  in  this  special  narrow  field  Whittier 
has  not  yet  been  surpassed  by  poets. 

The  sense  of  isolation  and  what  painters  would  call  "the 
atmosphere"  are  conveyed  in' lines  like  these:  — 

"  Shut  in  from  all  the  world  without, 
We  sat  the  clean-winged  hearth  about, 


242  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

Content  to  let  the  north  wind  roar 
In  baffled  rage  at  pane  and  door, 
While  the  red  logs  before  us  beat 
The  frost  line  back  with  tropic  heat ;' 
And  ever  when  a  louder  blast 
Shook  beam  and  rafter  as  it  passed, 
The  merrier  up  its  roaring  draught 
The  great  throat  of  the  chimney  laughed." 

In  such  a  focus  he  shows  the  life  of  the  household ;  the 
mother,  who  often  left  her  home  to  attend  sick  neighbors, 
now:  — 

"  .  .  .     seeking  to  express 
Her  grateful  sense  of  happiness 
For  food  and  shelter,  warmth  and  health, 
And  love's  contentment,  more  than  wealth," 

the  uncle :  — 

"...     innocent  of  books, 
Was  rich  in  lore  of  fields  and  brooks, 

A  simple,  guileless,  childlike  man, 
Strong  only  on  his  native  grounds, 
The  little  world  of  sights  and  sounds 
Whose  girdle  was  the  parish  bounds," 

the  aunt,  who  :  — 

"  Found  peace  in  love's  unselfishness," 
the  sister :  — 

"  A  full  rich  nature,  free  to  trust, 
Truthful  and  even  sternly  just, 
Impulsive,  earnest,  prompt  to  act, 
And  make  her  generous  thought  a  fact, 
Keeping  with  many  a  light  disguise 
The  secret  of  self-sacrifice." 

Some  read   Snow-Bound  for  its  pictures  of  nature  and 
some  for  its  still  more  remarkable  portraits  of  the  members 


JOHN    GREENLEAF   WHITTIER  243 

of  that  household.  This  poem  has  achieved  for  the  New 
England  fireside  what  Burns  accomplished  for  the  hearths 
of  Scotland  in  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night. 

Whittier  wrote  many  fine  short  lyrical  poems,  such  as 
Ichabod,  The  Lost  Occasion,  My  Playmate  (which  was 
Tennyson's  -  favorite),  In  School  Days,  Memories,  My 
Trizimph,  Telling  the  Bees,  The  Eternal  Goodness,  and  the 
second  part  of  A  Sea  Dream.  His  narrative  poems  and 
ballads  are  second  only  to  Longfellow's.  Maud  Muller, 
Skipper  Iresoris  Ride,  Cassandra  Southwick,  Barbara 
Frietchie,  and  Mabel  Martin  are  among  the  best  of  these. 

General  Characteristics. — Whittier  and  Longfellow  re 
semble  each  other  in  simplicity.  Both  are  the  poets  of 
the  masses,  of  those  whose  lives  most  need  the  consolation 
of  poetry.  Both  suffer  from  diffuseness,  Whittier  in  his 
greatest  poems  less  than  Longfellow.  Whittier  was  self- 
educated,  and  he  never  traveled  far  from  home.  His 
range  is  narrower  than  Longfellow's,  who  was  college  bred 
and  broadened  by  European  travel.  But  if  Whittier' s 
poetic  range  is  narrower,  if  he  is  the  poet  of  only  the 
•common  things  of  life,  he  shows  more  intensity  of  feeling. 
Often  his  simplest  verse  comes  from  the  depths  of  his 
heart.  He  wrote  In  School  Days  forty  years  after  the 
grass  had  been  growing  on  the  grave  of  the  little  girl  who 
spelled  correctly  the  word  which  the  boy  had  missed :  — - 

" '  I'm  sorry  that  I  spelt  the  word : 

I  hate  to  go  above  you, 
Because,'  —  the  brown  eyes  lower  fell,— 
*  Because  you  see,  I  love  you  ! ' 

"  He  lives  to  learn,  in  life's  hard  school, 

How  few  who  pass  above  him 
Lament  their  triumph  and  his  loss, 
Like  her,  —  because  they  love  him." 


244  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

Whittier's  simplicity,  genuineness,  and  sympathetic  heart 
stand  revealed  in  those  lines. 

His  youthful  work  shows  traces  of  the  influence  of  many 
poets,  but  he  learned  most  from  Robert  Burns.  Whittier 
himself  says  that  it  v/as  Burns  who  taught  him  to  see 

"...  through  all  familiar  things 
The  romance  underlying," 

and  especially  to  note  that 

"  Through  all  his  tuneful  art,  how  strong 
The  human  feeling  gushes !  " 

The  critics  have  found  three  indictments  against  Whit- 
tier;  first,  for  the  unequal  value  of  his  poetry;  second,  for 
its  loose  rhymes;  and  third,  for  too  much  moralizing.  He 
would  probably  plead  guilty  to  all  of  these  indictments. 
His  tendency  to  moralize  is  certainly  excessive,  but  critics 
have  too  frequently  forgotten  that  this  very  moralizing 
draws  him  closer  to  the  heart  of  suffering  humanity. 
There  are  times  when  the  majority  of  human  beings  feel 
the  need  of  the  consolation  which  he  brings  in  his  religious 
verse  and  in  such  lines  as  these  from  Snow-Bound:  — 

"  Alas  for  him  who  never  sees 
The  stars  shine  through  his  cypress  trees 
Who,  hopeless,  lays  his  dead  away, 
Nor  looks  to  see  the  breaking  day 
Across  the  mournful  marbles  play  ! 
Who  hath  not  learned,  in  hours  of  faith, 

The  truth  to  flesh  and  sense  unknown, 
That  Life  is  ever  lord  of  Death 

And  Love  can  never  lose  its  own  ! " 

He  strives  to  impress  on  all  the  duty  of  keeping  the 
windows  of  the  heart  open  to  the  day  and  of  "  finding  peace 
in  love's  unselfishness." 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 


245 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL,  1819-1891 

Early  Years.— James  Russell  Lowell,  the  son  of  the 
Rev.  Charles  Lowell,  was  a  descendant  of  one  of  the  best 
of  the  old  New  England  families.  The  city  of  Lowell 
and  the  Lowell  Institute  of  Boston  received  their  names 
from  uncles  of  the  author.  His  mother's  name  was  Spence, 
and  she  used  to  tell  her  son  that  the  Spence  family,  which 
was  of  Scotch  origin,  was  decended  from  Sir  Patrick 
Spens  of  ballad  fame.  She  loved  to  sing  to  her  boy  in 
the  gloaming :  — 


246 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND    GROUP 


"  O  forty  miles  off  Aberdeen, 

Tis  fifty  fathoms  deep, 
And  there  lies  gude  Sir  Patrick  Spens, 
Wi1  the  Scots  lords  at  his  feet." 

From    her    Celtic    blood    her   son    inherited    a    tendency 

toward  poetry.  When  a  child, 
he  was  read  to  sleep  with 
Spenser's  Faerie  Queene  and 
he  found  amusement  in  re 
telling  its  stories  to  his  play 
mates. 

James  Russell  Lowell  was 
born  in  1819,  in  the  suburbs 
of  Cambridge,  Massachusetts, 
in  the  fine  old  historic  home 
called  "  Elmwood,"  which 
was  one  of  the  few  homes  to 
witness  the  birth  and  death 
of  a  great  American  author 
and  to  remain  his  native  resi 
dence  for  seventy-two  years. 

His  early  opportunities  were  in  striking  contrast  to  those 
of  Whittier ;  for  Lowell,  like  his  ancestors  for  three  gener 
ations,  went  to  Harvard.  Because  of  what  the  Lowell  side 
of  his  family  called  "the  Spence  negligence,"  he  was 
suspended  from  college  for  inattention  to  his  studies  and 
sent  to  Concord  to  be  coached  by  a  tutor.  We  know,  how 
ever,  that  a  part  of  Lowell's  negligence  was  due  to  his 
reading  and  imitating  such  poetry  as  suited  his  fancy.  It 
was  fortunate  that  he  was  sent  to  Concord,  for  there  he 
had  the  opportunity  of  meeting  Emerson  and  Thoreau  and 
of  drinking  in  patriotism  as  he  walked  "  the  rude  bridge 
that  arch'd  the  flood"  (p.  179).  He  was  elected  class 


JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL  247 

poet,  but  he  was  not  allowed  to  return  in  time  to  deliver 
his  poem  before  his  classmates,  although  he  received  his 
degree  with  them  in  1838. 

Marriage  and  New  Impulses.  —  Like  Irving  and  Bryant, 
Lowell  studied  law,  and  then  gave  up  that  profession  for 
literature.  In  1839  ne  met  Miss  Maria  White,  a  transcen- 
dentalist  of  noble  impulses.  Before  this  he  had  made  fun 
of  the  abolitionists,  but  under  her  influence  he  followed 
men  like  Whittier  into  the  anti-slavery  ranks.  She  was 
herself  a  poet  and  she  wrote  to  Lowell  after  they  became 
engaged : — 

"  I  love  thee  for  thyself —  thyself  alone  ; 

For  that  great  soul  whose  breath  most  full  and  rare 
Shall  to  humanity  a  message  bear, 
Flooding  their  dreary  waste  with  organ  tone." 

Under  such  inspiration,  "  the  Spence  negligence  "  left  him, 
and  with  rapid  steps  he  entered  the  temple  of  fame.  In 
December,  1844,  the  month  in  which  he  married  her,  he 
wrote  the  finest  lines  ever  penned  by  him :  — 

"  Truth  forever  on  the  scaffold,  Wrong  forever  on  the  throne,  — 
Yet  that  scaffold  sways  the  future,  and,  behind  the  dim  unknown, 
Standeth  God  within  the  shadow,  keeping  watch  above  his  own." 

Lowell's  twenty-ninth  year,  1848,  is  called  his  annus 
mirabilis,  the  wonderful  year  of  his  life.  He  had  pub 
lished  small  volumes  of  poems  in  1840,  1843,  and  1847,  but 
in  1848  there  appeared  three  of  his  most  famous  works, — 
The  Biglcw  Papers,  First  Series,  A  Fable  for  Critics,  and  The 
Vision  tf  Sir  Lannfal. 

As  Mrs.  Lowell's  health  was  delicate,  Lowell  took  her 
abroad,  in  1851,  for  a  year's  stay.  Thackeray  came  over 
on  the  same  ship  with  them,  on  their  return  in  1852,  and 
proved  a  genial  companion.  The  next  year  Mrs.  Lowell 
died.  When  he  thought  of  the  inspiration  which  she  had 


248 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 


given  him  and  of  the  thirteen  years  of  her  companionship, 
he  said,  "  It  is  a  million  times  better  to  have  had  her  and 

lost  her,  than  to  have  had  and 
kept  any  other  woman  I  ever 
saw." 

Later  Work.  —  After  his 
great  bereavement  in  1853, 
Lowell  became  one  of  Amer 
ica's  greatest  prose  writers. 
In  1855  he  was  appointed 
Longfellow's  successor  in 
the  Harvard  professorship 
of  modern  languages  and 
polite  literature,  a  position 
which  he  held,  with  the  ex 
ception  of  two  years  spent  in 
European  travel,  until  1877. 
The  duties  of  his  chair  called 
for  wide  reading  and  frequent 
lecturing,  and  he  turned  much  of  his  attention  toward  writ 
ing  critical  essays.  The  routine  work  of  his  professorship 
often  grew  irksome  and  the  "  Spence  negligence "  was 
sometimes  in  evidence  in  his  failure  to  meet  his  classes. 
As  a  teacher,  he  was,  however,  frequently  very  stimulating. 
He  was  the  editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  from  its  begin 
ning  in  1857  until  1 86 1.  All  of  the  second  series  of  the  Big- 
low  Papers  appeared  in  this  magazine.  From  1864  to  1872 
he  was  one  of  the  editors  of  the  North  American  Review. 

In  1877  he  became  the  minister  of  the  United  States 
to  Spain.  The  Spanish  welcomed  him  to  the  post  that 
Washington  Irving  had  once  filled.  In  1880  Lowell  was 
transferred  to  England,  where  he  represented  has  country 
until  1885.  No  other  American  minister  has  ever  proved 


MRS.   MARIA  WHITE   LOWELL 


JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL  249 

a  greater  success  in  England.  He  was  respected  for  his 
literary  attainments  and  for  his  ability  as  a  speaker.  He  had 
the  reputation  of  being  one  of  the  very  best  speakers  in  the 
Kingdom,  and  he  was  in  much  demand  to  speak  at  banquets 
and  on  special  occasions.  Many  of  his  articles  and 
speeches  were  on  political  subjects,  the  greatest  of  these 
being  his  address  on  Democracy,  at  Birmingham,  in  1884. 

Although  his  later  years  showed  his  great  achievements 
in  prose,  he  did  not  cease  to  produce  poetry.  The  second 
series  of  the  Biglow  Papers  was  written  during  the  Civil 
War.  His  Ode  Recited  at  the  Harvard  Commemoration 
in  1865,  in  honor  of  those  who  fell  in  freeing  the  slave, 

"Who  in  warm  life-blood  wrote  their  nobler  verse," 
his  three  memorial  poems:,  (i)  Ode  Read  at  the  One 
Hundredth  Anniversary  of  the  Fight  at  Concord  Bridge 
(1875),  (2)  Under  the  Old  Elm  (1875),  written  in  com 
memoration  of  Washington's  taking  command  of  the  Con 
tinental  forces  under  that  tree,  a  century  before,  and  (3) 
Ode  for  the  Fourth  of  July,  1876,  are  well-known  patriotic 
American  poems. 

After  returning  from  England  and  passing  from  the  ex 
citement  of  diplomatic  and  social  life  to  a  quiet  New  Eng 
land  home,  he  wrote  :  — 

"I  take  my  reed  again  and  blow  it  free 
Of  dusty  silence,  murmuring,  «  Sing  to  me.1 
And,  as  its  stops  my  curious  touch  retries, 
The  stir  of  earlier  instincts  I  surprise, — 
Instincts,  if  less  imperious,  yet  more  strong, 
And  happy  in  the  toil  that  ends  with  song." 

In  1888  he  published  a  volume  of  poems  called  Heartsease 
and  Rue.  He  died  in  1891  and  was  buried  in  Mount 
Auburn  Cemetery,  near  his  "  Elmwood  "  home,  not  far 
from  the  last  resting  place  of  Longfellow. 


25° 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


LOWELL'S  STUDY,    ELMWOOD 

Poetry.  —  Lowell  wrote  many  short  lyrical  poems,  which 
rank  high.  Some  of  them,  like  Our  Love  is  not  a  Fading 
Earthly  Flower,  O  MoonligJit  Deep  and  Tender,  To  the 
Dandelion,  and  The  First  Snoiv-Fall  are  exquisite  lyrics  of 
nature  and  sentiment.  Others,  like  The  Present  Crisis, 
have  for  their  text,  "  Humanity  sweeps  onward,"  and  teach 
high  moral  ideals.  Still  others,  like  his  poems  written  in 
commemoration  of  some  event,  are  instinct  with  patriot 
ism. 

He  is  best  known  for  three  long  poems,  The  Biglow 
Papers,  A  Fable  for  Critics,  and  Tlie  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal. 
All  of  these,  with  the  exception  of  the  second  series  of  The 
Biglow  Papers,  appeared  in  his  wonderful  poetic  year, 
1848. 


JAMES   RUSSELL  LOWELL  351 

He  will,  perhaps,  be  longest  known  to  posterity  for  +hat 
remarkable  series  of  papers  written  in  what  he  called  the 
Yankee  dialect  and  designed  at  first  to  stop  the  extension 
of  slavery  and  afterwards  to  suppress  it.  These  are  called 
"  Biglow  Papers  "  because  the  chief  author  is  represented 
to  be  Hosea  Biglow,  a  typical  New  England  farmer.  The 
immediate  occasion  of  the  first  series  of  these  Papers  was 
the  outbreak  of  the  Mexican  War  in  1846.  Lowell  said  in 
after  years,  "  I  believed  our  war  with  Mexico  to  be  essen 
tially  a  war  of  false  pretences,  and  that  it  would  result  in 
widening  the  boundaries  and  so  prolonging  the  life  of  slav 
ery."  The  second  series  of  these  Papers,  dealing  with 
our  Civil  War,  began  to  be  published  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
in  1862.  The  poem  lives  to-day,  however,  not  for  its  cen 
sure  of  the  war  or  for  its  attack  on  slavery,  but  for  its  ex 
pression  of  the  mid-nineteenth  century  New  England  ideals, 
hard  common  sense,  and  dry  humor.  Where  shall  we 
turn  for  a  more  incisive  statement  of  the  Puritan's  attitude 
toward  pleasure  ? 

"Pleasure  doos  make  us  Yankees  kind  o'  winch, 
Ez  though  't  wuz  sunthin'  paid  for  by  the  inch ; 
But  yit  we  du  contrive  to  worry  thru, 
Ef  Dooty  tells  us  thet  the  thing's  to  du, 
An'  kerry  a  hollerday,  ef  we  set  out, 
Ez  stiddily  ez  though 't  wuz  a  redoubt.'1 

The  homely  New  England  common-sense  philosophy  it> 
in  evidence  throughout  the  Papers.  We  frequently  mee» 
such  expressions  as  :  — 

"  I  like  the  plain  all  wool  o'  common-sense 
Thet  warms  ye  now,  an'  will  a  twelve-month  hence." 

"  Now's  the  only  bird  lays  eggs  o'  gold." 


252  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

"  Democracy  gives  every  man 
The  right  to  be  his  own  oppressor." 

u  But  Chance  is  like  an  amberill,  —  it  don't  take  twice  to  lose  it." 

"  An'  you've  gut  to  git  up  airly, 
Ef  you  want  to  take  in  God." 

In  the  second  series  of  the  Papers ',  there  is  one  of 
Lowell's  best  lyrics,  The  Courtirf.  It  would  be  difficult  to 
find  another  poem  which  gives  within  the  compass  of  four 
lines  a  better  characterization  of  many  a  New  England 
maiden :  — 

"  .   .  .  she  was  jes'  the  quiet  kind 

Whose  natur's  never  vary, 
Like  streams  that  keep  a  summer  mind, 
Snowhid  in  Jenooary." 

This  series  contains  some  of  Lowell's  best  nature  poetry. 
We  catch  rare  glimpses  of 

"  Moonshine  an'  snow  on  field  an'  hill 
All  silence  an'  all  glisten," 

and  we  actually  see  a  belated  spring 

"  Toss  the  fields  full  o'  blossoms,  leaves,  an'  birds." 

The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal  has  been  the  most  widely 
read  of  Lowell's  poems.  This  is  the  vision  of  a  search  for 
the  Holy  Grail.  Lowell  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  called  the 
poem  "  a  sort  of  story  and  more  likely  to  be  popular  than 
what  I  write  about  generally."  But  the  best  part  of  the 
poem  is  to  be  found  in  the  apotheosis  of  the  New  England 
June,  in  the  Prelude  to  Part  L  :  — • 

"And  what  is  so  rare  as  a  day  in  June? 

Then,  if  ever,  come  perfect  days  ; 
Then  Heaven  tries  the  earth  if  it  be  in  tune, 
And  over  it  softly  her  warm  ear  lays." 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL  253 

The  poem  teaches  a  noble  lesson  of  sympathy  with  suf 
fering  : — 

"  Not  what  we  give,  but  what  we  share,  — 
For  the  gift  without  the  giver  is  bare ; 
Who  gives  himself  with  his  alms  feeds  three, — • 
Himself,  his  hungering  neighbor,  and  Me." 

Lowell  said  that  he  "  scrawled  at  full  gallop  "  A  Fabte 
for  Critics,  which  is  a  humorous  poem  of  about  two  thou 
sand  long  lines,  presenting  an  unusually  excellent  criticism 
of  his  contemporary  authors.  In  this  most  difficult  type  of 
criticism,  Lowell  was  not  infallible;  but  a  comparison  of 
his  criticisms  with  the  verdicts  generally  accepted  to-day 
will  show  his  unusual  ability  in  this  field.  Not  a  few  of 
these  criticisms  remain  the  best  of  their  kind,  and  they 
serve  to  focus  many  of  the  characteristics  of  the  authors 
of  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  will  benefit 
all  writers,  present  and  prospective,  to  read  this  criticism 
on  Bryant :  — 

"He  is  almost  the  one  of  your  poets  that  knows 
How  much  grace,  strength,  and  dignity  lie  in  Repose ; 
If  he  sometimes  fall  short,  he  is  too  wise  to  mar 
His  thought's  modest  fulness  by  going  too  far; 
T would  be  well  if  your  authors  should  all  make  a  trial 
Of  what  virtue  there  is  in  severe  self-denial, 
And  measure  their  writings  by  Hesiod's  staff, 
Who  teaches  that  all  has  less  value  than  half." 

Especially  humorous  are  those  lines  which  give  a  recipe 
for  the  making  of  a  Washington  Irving  and  those  which 
describe  the  idealistic  philosophy  of  Emerson  :  — 

"In  whose  mind  all  creation  is  duly  respected 
As  parts  of  himself — just  a  little  projected." 


254  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

P:ose.  —  Lowell's  literary  essays  entitle  him  to  rank  as 
a  great  American  critic.  The  chief  of  these  are  to  be 
found  gathered  in  three  volumes  :  Among  My  Books  (1870), 
My  Study  Windows  (1871),  Among  My  Books,  Second 
Series  (1876).  These  volumes  as  originally  issued  contain 
1140  pages.  If  we  should  wish  to  persuade  a  group  of 
moderately  intelligent  persons  to  read  less  fiction  and  more 
solid  literature,  it  is  doubtful  if  we  could  accomplish  our 
purpose  more  easily  than  by  inducing  them  to  dip  into 
some  of  these  essays.  Lowell  had  tested  many  of  them 
on  his  college  students,  and  he  had  noted  what  served  to 
kindle  interest  and  to  produce  results.  We  may  recom 
mend  five  of  his  greater  literary  essays,  which  would  give 
a  vivid  idea  of  the  development  of  English  poetry  from 
Chaucer  to  the  death  of  Pope.  These  five  are :  Chaucer, 
in  My  Study  Windows  ;  Spenser,  in  Among  My  Books, 
Second  Series ;  Shakespeare  Once  More,  and  Dryden,  in 
Among  My  Books,  First  Series ;  and  Pope,  in  My  Study 
Windows.  If  we  add  to  these  the  short  addresses  on 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  delivered  in  England,  and 
printed  in  the  volume  Democracy  and  Other  Addresses 
(1886),  we  shall  have  the  incentive  to  continue  the  study 
of  poetry  into  the  nineteenth  century. 

Lowell's  criticism  provokes  thought.  It  will  not  submit 
to  a  passive  reading.  It  expresses  truth  in  unique  and 
striking  ways.  Speaking  of  the  French  and  Italian 
sources  on  which  Chaucer  drew,  Lowell  says  :  — 

"  Should  a  man  discover  the  art  of  transmuting  metals,  and  present 
us  with  a  lump  of  gold  as  large  as  an  ostrich  egg,  would  it  be  in  human 
nature  to  inquire  too  nicely  whether  he  had  stolen  the  lead  ?  .  .  . 

"Chaucer,  like  Shakespeare,  invented  almost  nothing.  Wherever 
he  found  anything  directed  to  Geoffrey  Chaucer,  he  took  it  and  made 
the  most  of  it.  ... 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL  255 

"  Sometimes  he  describes  amply  by  the  merest  hint,  as  where  the  Friar, 
before  setting  himself  softly  down,  drives  away  the  cat.  We  knew 
without  need  of  more  words  that  he  has  chosen  the  snuggest  corner." 

Lowell  usually  makes  the  laziest  readers  do  a  little  pleasant 
thinking.  It  is  common  for  even  inert  students  to  investi 
gate  his  meaning ;  for  instance,  in  his  statements  that  in 
the  age  of  Pope  "  everybody  ceremoniously  took  a  bushel 
basket  to  bring  a  wren's  egg  to  market  in,"  and  that  every 
body  "  called  everything  something  else." 

The  high  ideals  and  sterling  common  sense  of  Lowell's 
political  prose  deserve  special  mention.  In  Democracy 
(1886),  which  should  be  read  by  every  citizen,  Lowell  shows 
that  old  age  had  not  shattered  his  faith  in  ideals.  "  I  be 
lieve,"  he  said,  "that  the  real  will  never  find  an  irremovable 
basis  until  it  rests  on  the  ideal."  Voters  and  lawmakers 
are  to-day  beginning  to  realize  that  they  will  go  far  to  find 
in  the  same  compass  a  greater  amount  of  common  sense 
than  is  contained  in  these  words  :  — 

"  It  is  only  when  the  reasonable  and  the  practicable  are  denied  that 
men  demand  the  unreasonable  and  impracticable ;  only  when  the  pos 
sible  is  made  difficult  that  they  fancy  the  impossible  to  be  easy.  Fairy 
tales  are  made  out  of  the  dreams  of  the  poor."1 

General  Characteristics.  —  Lowell  has  written  verse 
which  shows  sympathetic  treatment  of  nature.  His  lines 
To  the  Dandelion  :  — 

"  Dear  common  flower,  that  grow'st  beside  the  way, 
Fringing  the  dusty  road  with  harmless  gold, 

First  pledge  of  blithesome  May 
Which  children  pluck,  and  full  of  pride  uphold 

.  .  .  thou  art  more  dear  to  me 
Than  all  the  prouder  summer-blooms  may  be," 


1  Democracy  and  Other  Addresses,  p.  15. 


256          THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

show  rare  genuineness  of  feeling.     No  one  not  enthusiastic 
about  nature  would  ever  have  heard  her  calling  to  him  :  — 

"  To  mix  his  blood  with  sunshine,  and  to  take 
The  winds  into  his  pulses." 

He  invites  us  in  March  to  watch  :  — 

"  The  bluebird,  shifting  his  light  load  of  song 
From  post  to  post  along  the  cheerless  fence," 

and  in  June  to  lie  under  the  willows  and  rejoice  with 

"  The  thin-winged  swallow,  skating  on  the  air." 
Another  pronounced  characteristic  which  he  has  in  com 
mon   with  the  New  England  group  is  nobility  of  ideals. 
His  poem  entitled  For  an  Autograph,  voices  in  one  line 
the  settled  conviction  of  his  life  :  — 

"  Not  failure,  but  low  aim,  is  crime." 

He  is  America's  greatest  humorist  in  verse.  The  Big- 
low  Papers  and  A  Fable  for  Critics  are  ample  justification 
for  such  an  estimate. 

As  Lowell  grew  older,  his  poetry,  dominated  too  much 
by  his  acute  intellect,  became  more  and  more  abstract.  In 
Under  the  Old  Elm,  for  example,  he  speaks  of  Washington 
as  i  — 

"  The  equestrian  shape  with  unimpassioned  brow 
That  paces  silent  on  through  vistas  of  acclaim." 

It  is  possible  to  read  fifty  consecutive  lines  of  his  Com 
memoration  Ode  without  finding  any  but  abstract  or 
general  terms,  which  are  rarely  the  warp  and  woof  out  of 
which  the  best  poetry  is  spun.  This  criticism  explains 
why  repeated  readings  of  some  of  his  poems  leave  so  little 
impression  on  the  mind.  Some  of  the  poetry  of  his  later 
life  is,  however,  concrete  and  sensuous,  as  the  following 
lines  from  his  poem  Agassiz  (1874)  show :  — 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL  257 

"  To  lie  in  buttercups  and  clover-bloom, 
Tenants  in  common  with  the  bees, 
And  watch  the  white  clouds  drift  through  gulfs  of  trees, 
Is  better  than  long  waiting  in  the  tomb.1' 

In  prose  literary  criticism,  he  keeps  his  place  with  Poe 
at  the  head  of  American  writers.  Lowell's  sentences  are 
usually  simple  in  form  and  easily  understood;  they  are  fre 
quently  enlivened  by  illuminating  figures  of  rhetoric  and 
by  humor,  or  rendered  impressive  by  the  striking  way  in 
which  they  express  thought,  e.g.  "The  foolish  and  the  dead 
alone  never  change  their  opinion.'*  A  pun,  digression,  or 
out-of-the-way  allusion  may  occasionally  provoke  readers, 
but  onlookers  have  frequently  noticed  that  few  wrinkle 
their  brows  while  reading  his  critical  essays,  and  that  a 
pleased  expression,  such  as  photographers  like,  is  almost 
certain  to  appear.  He  has  the  rare  faculty  of  making  his 
readers  think  hard  enough  for  agreeable  exercise,  and  yet 
he  spares  them  undue  fatigue  and  rarely  takes  them  among 
miry  bogs  or  through  sandy  deserts. 

Lowell's  versatility  is  a  striking  characteristic.  He  was 
a  poet,  reformer,  college  professor,  editor,  literary  critic, 
diplomatist,  speaker,  and  writer  on  political  subjects.  We 
feel  that  he  sometimes  narrowly  escaped  being  a  genius, 
and  that  he  might  have  crossed  the  boundary  line  into 
genius-land,  if  he  had  confined  his  attention  to  one  depart 
ment  of  literature  and  had  been  willing  to  write  at  less 
breakneck  speed,  taking  time  and  thought  to  prune,  re 
vise,  and  suppress  more  of  his  productions.  Not  a  few, 
however,  think  that  Lowell,  in  spite  of  his  defects,  has 
left  the  impress  of  genius  on  some  of  his  work.  When  his 
sonnet,  Our  Love  is  not  a  Fading  Earthly  Flower,  was  read 
to  a  cultured  group,  some  who  did  not  recognize  the  author 
ship  of  the  verses  thought  that  they  were  Shakespeare's. 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  1809  1894 

Life. The  year  1809  was  prolific  in  the  birth  of  great 

men,  producing  Holmes,  Poe,  Lincoln,  Tennyson,  and 
Darwin.  Holmes  was  descended  from  Anne  Bradstreet, 
New  England's  "  Tenth  Muse  "  (p.  39>  His  father  was  a 
Congregational  clergyman,  preaching  at  Cambridge  when 
Oliver  was  born.  The  family  was  in  comfortable  circum 
stances,  and  the  boy  was  reared  in  a  cultured  atmosphere. 
In  middle  age  Holmes  wrote,  "I  like  books,  — I  was  born 
and  bred  among  them,  and  have  the  easy  feeling,  when  I 
get  into  their  presence,  that  a  stable  boy  has  among 
horses." 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES  259 

He  graduated  from  Harvard  in  the  famous  class  of  1829, 
for  which  he  afterward  wrote  many  anniversary  poems. 
He  went  to  Paris  to  study  medicine,  a  science  that  held 
his  interest  through  life.  For  thirty-five  years  he  was  pro 
fessor  of  anatomy  in  the  Harvard  Medical  School,  where 
he  was  the  only  member  of  the  faculty  who  could  at  the 
end  of  the  day  take  the  class,  fagged  and  wearied,  and  by 
his  wit,  stories,  and  lively  illustrations  both  instruct  and 
interest  the  students. 

His  announcement,  "  small  fevers  gratefully  received,"  his 
humor  in  general,  and  his  poetry  especially,  did  not  aid  him 
in  securing  patients.  His  biographer  says  that  Holmes 
learned  at  his  cost  as  a  doctor  that  the  world  had  made  up 
its  mind  "  that  he  who  writes  rhymes  must  not  write  pre 
scriptions,  and  he  who  makes  jests  should  not  escort  people 
to  their  graves."  He  later  warned  his  students  that  if  they 
would  succeed  in  any  one  calling  they  must  not  let  the 
world  find  out  that  they  were  interested  in  anything  else. 
From  his  own  point  of  view,  he  wrote  :  — 

"It's  a  vastly  pleasing  prospect,  when  you're  screwing  out  a  laugh, 
That  your  very  next  year's  income  is  diminished  by  a  half, 
And  a  little  boy  trips  barefoot  that  your  Pegasus  may  go, 
And  the  baby's  milk  is  watered  that  your  Helicon  may  flow." 

He  was  driven,  like  Emerson  and  Lowell,  to  supplement 
his  modest  income  by  what  he  called  "  lecture  peddling." 
Although  Holmes  did  not  have  the  platform  presence  of 
these  two  contemporaries,  he  had  the  power  of  reach 
ing  his  audiences  and  of  quickly  gaining  their  sympathy, 
so  that  he  was  very  popular  and  could  always  get  engage 
ments. 

His  scientific  training  made  him  intolerant  of  any  philo 
sophical  or  religious  creed  which  seemed  to  him  to  be  based 
merely  upon  superstition  or  tradition.  He  was  thoroughly 


260 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


alert,  open-minded,  and  liberal  upon  all  such  questions. 
On  subjects  of  politics,  war,  or  the  abolition  of  slavery,  he 
was,  on  the  other  hand,  strongly  conservative.  He  had 
the  aristocratic  dread  of  change.  He  was  distinctly  the 
courtly  gentleman,  the  gifted  talker,  and  the  social,  genial, 
refined  companion. 

Holmes  was  a  conscientious  worker,  but  he  characteristi 
cally  treated  his  mental  processes  in  a  joking  way,  and  wrote 

to  a  friend  :  "  I  like 
nine  tenths  of  any 
matter  I  study,  but  I 
do  not  like  to  lick  the 
plate.  If  I  did,  I  sup 
pose  I  should  be 
more  of  a  man  of 
science  and  find  my 
brain  tired  oftener 

HOLMES'S  STUDY  j      ^» 


he  wrote,  "  my  nature  is  to  snatch  at  all  the  fruits  of  knowl 
edge  and  take  a  good  bite  out  of  the  sunny  side  —  after 
that  let  in  the  pigs."  Despite  these  statements,  Holmes 
worked  steadily  every  year  at  his  medical  lectures.  He 
was  very  particular  about  the  exactness  and  finish  of  all  that 
he  wrote,  and  he  was  neither  careless  nor  slipshod  in  any 
thing.  His  life,  while  filled  with  steady,  hard  work,  was  a 
placid  one,  full  of  love  and  friendships,  and  he  passed  into 
his  eightieth  year  with  a  young  heart.  He  died  in  1894,  at 
the  age  of  eighty-five,  and  was  buried  in  Mt.  Auburn  cem 
etery  not  far  from  Longfellow  and  Lowell. 

Poetry.  —  In  1836  he  published  his  first  volume  of  verse. 
This  contained  his  first  widely  known  poem,  Old  Ironsides^ 
a  successful  plea  for  saving  the  old  battleship,  Constitution, 
which  had  been  ordered  destroyed.  With  the  excep- 


OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES  26l 

tion  of  this  poem  and  The  Last  Leaf  ]  the  volume  is  remark 
able  for  little  except  the  rollicking  fun  which  we  find  in  such 
favorites  as  The  Ballad  of  the  Oysterman  and  My  Aunt. 
This  type  of  humor  is  shown  in  this  simile  from  The  Bal 
lad:— 

"  Her  hair  drooped  round  her  pallid  cheeks,  like  seaweed  on  a  clam," 
and  in  his  description  of  his  aunt :  — 

"Her  waist  is  ampler  than  her  life, 
For  life  is  but  a  span.1' 

He  continued  to  write  verses  until  his  death.  Among 
the  last  poems  which  he  wrote  were  memorials  on  the 
death  of  Lowell  (1891)  and  Whittier  (1892).  As  we  search 
the  three  volumes  of  his  verse,  we  find  few  serious  poems 
of  a  high  order.  The  best,  and  the  one  by  which  he  him 
self  wished  to  be  remembered,  is  The  Chambered  Nautilus. 
No  member  of  the  New  England  group  voiced  higher 
ideals  than  we  find  in  the  noble  closing  stanza  of  this 
poem :  — 

"  Build  thee  more  stately  mansions,  O  my  soul, 
As  the  swift  seasons  roll ! 
Leave  thy  low-vaulted  past! 
Let  each  new  temple,  nobler  than  the  last, 
Shut  thee  from  heaven  with  a  dome  more  vast, 

Till  thou  at  length  art  free, 
Leaving  thine  outgrown  shell  by  life's  unresting  sea  !" 

Probably  The  Last  Leaf,  which  was  such  a  favorite  with 
Lincoln,  would  rank  second.  This  poem  is  remarkable  for 
preserving  the  reader's  equilibrium  between  laughter  and 
tears.  Some  lines  from  The  Voiceless  are  not  likely  to  be 
soon  forgotten :  — 

"  A  few  can  touch  the  magic  string. 

And  noisy  Fame  is  proud  to  win  them :  — 
Alas  for  those  that  never  sing, 

But  die  with  all  their  music  in  them! " 


262  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

He  wrote  no  more  cerious  poem  than  Homesick  in  Heaven, 
certain  stanzas  of  which  appeal  strongly  to  bereaved  hearts. 
It  is  not  easy  to  forget  the  song  of  the  spirits  who  have 
recently  come  from  earth,  of  the  mother  who  was  torn 
from  her  clinging  babe,  of  the  bride  called  away  with  the 
kiss  of  love  still  burning  on  her  cheek,  of  the  daughter 
taken  from  her  blind  and  helpless  father  :  — 

"  Children  of  earth,  our  half-weaned  nature  clings 
To  earth's  fond  memories,  and  her  whispered  name 
Untunes  our  quivering  lips,  our  saddened  strings ; 
For  there  we  loved,  and  where  we  love  is  home." 

When  Holmes  went  to  Oxford  in  1886,  to  receive  an 
honorary  degree,  it  is  probable  that,  as  in  the  case  of 
Irving  (p.  122),  the  Oxford  boys  in  the  gallery  voiced  the 
popular  verdict.  As  Holmes  stepped  on  the  platform, 
they  called,  "  Did  he  come  in  the  One-Hoss  Shay  ?  "  This 
humorous  poem,  first  known  as  The  Deacon's  Masterpiece, 
has  been  a  universal  favorite.  How  the  Old  Hoss  Won  the 
Bet  tells  with  rollicking  humor  what  the  parson's  nag  did 
at  a  race.  The  Boys,  with  its  mingled  humor  and  pathos, 
written  for  the  thirtieth  reunion  of  his  class,  is  one  of  the 
best  of  the  many  poems  which  he  was  so  frequently  asked 
to  compose  for  special  celebrations.  No  other  poet  of 
his  time  could  equal  him  in  furnishing  to  order  clever, 
apt,  humorous  verses  for  ever  recurring  occasions. 

Prose.  —  He  was  nearly  fifty  when  he  published  his  first 
famous  prose  work.  He  had  named  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
and  Lowell  had  agreed  to  edit  it  only  on  condition  that 
Holmes  would  promise  to  be  a  contributor.  In  the  first 
number  appeared  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table. 
Holmes  had  hit  upon  a  style  that  exactly  suited  his  tempera 
ment,  and  had  invented  a  new  prose  form.  His  great  con 
versational  gift  was  now  crystallized  in  these  breakfast  table 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 


263 


talks,  which  the  Autocrat  all 
but  monopolizes.  However, 
the  other  characters  at  the 
table  of  this  remarkable  board 
ing  house  in  Boston  join  in 
often  enough  to  keep  up  the 
interest  in  their  opinions,  feel 
ings,  and  relations  to  each 
other.  The  reader  always  wants 
to  know  the  impression  that 
the  Autocrat's  fine  talk  makes 
upon  "the  young  man  whom 
they  call  'John.' "  John  some 
times  puts  his  feelings  into 
action,  as  when  the  Autocrat 
gives  a  typical  illustration  of 
his  mixture  of  reasoning  and 
humor,  in  explaining  that  there 
are  always  six  persons  present 
when  two  people  are  talk 
ing:— 


THE  AUTOCRAT  OF  THE  BREAK 
FAST  TABLE 


"Three  Johns. 


"  Three  Thomases. 


1.  The  real  John  ;  known  only  to  his  Maker. 

2.  John's  ideal  John ;  never  the  real  one,  and 
often  very  unlike  him. 

3.  Thomas's  ideal  John ;  never  the  real  John, 
nor  John's  John,  but  often  very  unlike  either. 

1 .  The  real  Thomas. 

2.  Thomas's  ideal  Thomas. 

3.  John's  ideal  Thomas." 

"A  certain  basket  of  peaches,  a  rare  vegetable,  little 
known  to  boarding-houses,  was  on  its  way  to  me,"  says  the 
Autocrat,  "  via  this  unlettered  Johannes.  He  appropriated 


264  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

the  three  that  remained  in  the  basket,  remarking  that  there 
was  just  one  apiece  for  him.  I  convinced  him  that  his 
practical  inference  was  hasty  and  illogical,  but  in  the  mean 
time  he  had  eaten  the  peaches."  When  John  enters  the 
debates  with  his  crushing  logic  of  facts,  he  never  fails  to 
make  a  ten  strike. 

A  few  years  after  the  Autocrat  series  had  been  closed, 
Holmes  wrote  The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast  Table;  many 
years  later  The  Poet  at  the  Breakfast  Table  appeared;  and  in 
the  evening  of  life,  he  brought  out  Over  the  Teacups,  in 
which  he  discoursed  at  the  tea  table  in  a  similar  vein,  but  not 
in  quite  the  same  fresh,  buoyant,  humorous  way  in  which 
the  Autocrat  talked  over  his  morning  coffee.  The  decline 
in  these  books  is  gradual,  although  it  is  barely  perceptible 
in  the  Professor.  The  Aittocrat  is,  however,  the  brightest, 
crispest,  and  most  vigorous  of  the  series,  while  Over  the 
Teacups  is  the  calmest,  as  well  as  the  soberest  and  most 
leisurely. 

Holmes  wrote  three  novels,  Elsie  Venner,  The  Guardian 
Angel,  and  The  Mortal  Antipathy,  which  have  been  called 
"  medicated  novels  "  because  his  medical  knowledge  is  so 
apparent  in  them.  These  books  also  have  a  moral  pur 
pose,  each  in  turn  considering  the  question  whether  an 
individual  is  responsible  for  his  acts.  The  first  two  of 
these  novels  are  the  strongest,  and  hold  the  attention  to 
the  end  because  of  the  interest  aroused  by  the  characters 
and  by  the  descriptive  scenes. 

General  Characteristics.  —  Humor  is  the  most  character 
istic  quality  of  Holmes's  writings.  He  indeed  is  the  only 
member  of  the  New  England  group  who  often  wrote  with 
the  sole  object  of  entertaining  readers.  Lowell  also  was  a 
humorist,  but  he  employed  humor  either  in  the  cause  of 
reform,  as  in  The  Biglow  Papers,  or  in  the  field  of  knowl- 


OLIVER   WENDELL  HOLMES  265 

edge,  in  endeavoring  to  make  his  literary  criticisms  more 
expressive  and  more  certain  to  impress  the  mind  of  his 
readers. 

Whenever  Holmes  wrote  to  entertain,  he  did  not  aim  to 
be  deep  or  to  exercise  the  thinking  powers  of  his  readers. 
Much  of  his  work  skims  the  surface  of  things  in  an  amusing 
and  delightful  way.  Yet  he  was  too  much  of  a  New  Eng- 
lander  not  to  write  some  things  in  both  poetry  and  prose 
with  a  deeper  purpose  than  mere  entertainment.  The 
Chambered  Nautilus,  for  instance,  was  so  written,  as  were 
all  of  his  novels.  His  genial  humor  is  thus  frequently 
blended  with  unlooked-for  wisdom  or  pathos. 

Whittier  has  been  called  provincial  because  he  takes 
only  the  point  of  view  ofJNew  Engjand.  The  province  of 
Holmes  is  still  narrower,  being  mainly  confined  to  Boston. 
He  expresses  in  a  humorous  way  his  own  feelings,  as  well 
as  those  of  his  fellow  townsmen,  when  he  says  in  The  Au 
tocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table :  — 

"  Boston  State  House  is  the  hub  of  the  solar  system.  You  couldn't 
pry  that  out  of  a  Boston  man  if  you  had  the  tire  of  all  creation 
straightened  out  for  a  crowbar." 

Like  Irving,  Holmes  was  fond  of  eighteenth-century 
English  writers,  and  much  of  his  verse  is  modeled  after 
the  couplets  of  Pope.  Holmes  writes  fluid  and  rippling 
prose,  without  a  trace  of  effort.  His  meaning  is  never 
left  to  conjecture,  but  is  stated  in  pure,  exact  English. 
He  not  only  expresses  his  ideas  perfectly,  but  he  seems  t« 
achieve  this  result  without  premeditation.  This  apparent 
artlessness  is  a  great  charm.  He  has  left  America  a  new 
form  of  prose,  which  bears  the  stamp  of  pure  literature, 
and  which  is  distinguished  not  so  much  for  philosophy  and 
depth  as  for  grace,  versatility,  refined  humor,  bright  intel 
lectual  flashes,  and  artistic  finish. 


266 


THE   NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


THE  HISTORIANS 

Three  natives  of  Massachusetts  and  graduates  of  Har 
vard,  William  H.  Prescott,  John  Lothrop  Motley,  and 
Francis  Parkman,  wrote  history  in  such  a  way  as  to  entitle 
it  to  be  mentioned  in  our  literature.  We  cannot  class  as 
literature  those  historical  writings  which  are  not  enlivened 
with  imagination,  invested  with  at  least  an  occasional 
poetic  touch,  and  expressed  in  rare  style.  Unfortunately 
the  very  qualities  that  render  history  attractive  as  litera 
ture  often  tend  to  raise  doubts  about  the  scientific  method 
and  accuracy  of  the  historian.  For  this  reason  few  his 
tories  keep  for  a  great  length  of  time  a  place  in  literature, 
unless,  like  Irving's  Knickerbocker's  History  of  New  York, 
they  aim  to  give  merely  an  imaginative  interpretation  of  a 
past  epoch.  They  may  then,  like  Homer's  Iliad,  Shake 
speare's  Macbeth,  and  some  of  Irving's  and  Cooper's  work, 
be,  in  Celtic  phrase,  "more  historical 
rr,  ^  than  history  itself."  History  of  this 

||k          latter  type  lives,  and  is  a  treasure 

in  the  literature  of  any  nation. 

pNfe-  William  H.    Prescott  (1796- 

1859).  —  Like  Washington  Irv 
ing,  Prescott  was  attracted  by 
the  romantic  achievements  of 
Spain  during  the  years  of  her 
brilliant     successes,    and     he 
wrote  four  histories  upon  Span 
ish    subjects :    a   History  of   the 
Reign   of   Ferdinand    and  Isabella 
(1837),  a  History  of  the  Conquest  of 
Mexico  (1843),  a  History  of  the  Con 
quest   of  Peru   (1847),   and   a   History   of  the  Reign   of 


WILLIAM    H.    PRESCOTT 


THE  HISTORIANS 


267 


Philip  II.  (1855-1858),  the  last  of  which  he  did  not  live  to 
complete. 

He  was  a  careful,  painstaking  student.  He  learned  the 
Spanish  language,  had  copies  made  of  all  available  manu 
scripts  and  records  in  Europe,  and  closely  compared  con 
temporary  accounts  so  as  to  be  certain  of  the  accuracy  of 
his  facts.  Then  he  presented  them  in  an  attractive  form. 
His  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  and  the  part  he  finished  of 
Philip  II.  are  accurate  and  authoritative  to-day  because 
the  materials  which  he  found  for  them  are  true.  The  two 
histories  on  the  Spanish  conquests  in  the  New  World  are 
not  absolutely  correct  in  all  their  descriptions  of  the 
Aztecs  and  Incas  before  the  arrival  of  the  Spaniards. 
This  is  due  to  no  carelessness  on  Prescott's  part,  but  to 
the  highly  colored  accounts  upon  which  he  had  to  depend 
for  his  facts,  and  to  the  lack  of  the  archaeological  surveys 
which  have  since  been  carried  on  in  Mexico  and  Peru. 
These  two  histories  of  the  daring  exploits  of  a  handful  of 
adventurers  in  hostile  lands  are  as  thrilling  and  interesting 
as  novels.  We  seem  to  be  reading  a  tale  from  the  Arabian 
Nights,  as  we  follow  Pizarro  and  see  his  capture  of  the 
Peruvian  monarch  in  the  very  sight  of  his  own  army,  and 
view  the  rich  spoils  in  gold  and  silver  and  precious  stones 
which  were  carried  back  to  Spain.  In  relating  the  con 
quest  of  Mexico  by  Cortez,  Prescott  writes  the  history  of 
still  more  daring  adventures.  His  narrative  is  full  of  color, 
and  he  presents  facts  picturesquely. 

John  Lothrop  Motley  (1814-1877).  —  As  naturally  as  the 
love  of  adventure  sent  Prescott  to  the  daring  exploits  of 
the  Spanish  feats  of  arms,  so  the  inborn  zeal  for  civil  and 
religious  liberty  and  hatred  of  oppression  led  Motley  to 
turn  to  the  sturdy,  patriotic  Dutch  in  their  successful 
struggle  against  the  enslaving  power  of  Spain.  His  his- 


268 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 


tories  are  The  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic  (1856),  The 
History  of  the  United  Netherlands  (1860-1868),  The  Life 
and  Death  of  John  of  Barneveld,  Advocate  of  Holland 

(1874). 

The  difference  in  temperament  between  Prescott  and 
Motley  is  seen  in  the  manner  of  presenting  the  character 
of  Philip  II.  In  so  far  as  Prescott  drew  the  picture  of 
Philip  II.,  it  is  traced  with  a  mild,  cool 
hand.  Philip  is  shown  as  a  tyrant, 
but  he  is  impelled  to  his  tyranny  by 
motives  of  conscience.  In  Motley's 
The  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  this 
oppressor  is  an  accursed  scourge  of 
a  loyal  people,  the  enemy  of  prog 
ress,  of  liberty,  and  of  justice. 
Motley's  feelings  make  his  pages 
burn  and  flash  with  fiery  denun 
ciation,  as  well  as  with  exalted 
praise. 

The  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic 
is  the  recital  of  as  heroic  a  strug 
gle  as  a  small  but  determined  na 
tion  ever  made  against  tremendous  odds.  Amid  the  swarm 
of  men  that  crowd  the  pages  of  this  work,  William  the  Si 
lent,  of  Orange,  the  central  figure,  stands  every  inch  a  hero, 
a  leader  worthy  of  his  cause  and  of  his  people.  Motley 
with  an  artist's  skill  shows  how  this  great  leader  launched 
Holland  on  her  victorious  career.  This  history  is  a  living 
story,  faithful  to  facts,  but  it  is  written  to  convince  the 
reader  that  "  freedom  of  thought,  of  speech,  and  of  life  " 
are  "  blessings  without  which  everything  that  this  earth 
can  afford  is  worthless." 

In  choosing  to  write  of  the  struggle  of  Holland  for  her 


JOHN   LOTHROP  MOTLEY 


THE  HISTORIANS  269 

freedom,  Motley  was '  actuated  by  the  same  reason  that 
prompted  his  forefathers  to  fight  on  Bunker  Hill.  He 
wanted  to  play  at  least  a  historian's  part  in  presenting 
"  the  great  spectacle  which  was  to  prove  to  Europe  that 
principles  and  peoples  still  existed,  and  that  a  phlegmatic 
nation  of  merchants  and  manufacturers  could  defy  the 
powers  of  the  universe,  and  risk  all  their  blood  and  treasure, 
generation  after  generation,  in  a  sacred  cause." 

The  History  of  the  United  Netherlands  continues  this 
story  after  Holland,  free  and  united,  proved  herself  a 
power  that  could  no  longer  remain  unheeded  in  Europe. 
The  Life  and  Death  of  John  of  Barneveld,  which  brings 
the  history  of  Holland  down  to  about  1623,  was  planned 
as  an  introduction  to  a  final  history  of  that  great. religious 
and  political  conflict,  called  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  —  a 
history  which  Motley  did  not  live  to  finish. 

Although  no  historian  has  spent  more  time  than  Motley 
in  searching  the  musty  records  and  state  archives  of 
foreign  lands  for  matter  relating  to  Holland,  it  was  im 
possible  for  a  man  of  his  temperament,  convictions,  and 
purpose  to  write  a  calm,  dispassionate  history.  He  is  not 
the  cool  judge,  but  the  earnest  advocate,  and  yet  he  does 
not  distort  facts.  He  is  just  and  can  be  coldly  critical, 
even  of  his  heroes,  but  he  is  always  on  one  side,  the  side 
of  liberty  and  justice,  pleading  their  cause.  His  tempera 
ment  gives  warmth,  eloquence,  and  dramatic  passion  to 
his  style.  Individual  incidents  and  characters  stand  forth 
sharply  defined.  His  subject  seems  remarkably  well 
suited  to  him  because  his  love  of  liberty  was  a  sacred 
passion.  With  this  feeling  to  fire  his  blood,  the  unflinch 
ing  Hollander  to  furnish  the  story,  and  his  eloquent  style 
to  present  it  worthily,  Motley's  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic 
is  a  prose  epic  of  Dutch  liberty. 


270  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

Francis  Parkman  (1823-1893). — The  youngest  and  great 
est  of  this  group  of  historians  was  born  of  Puritan  blood 
in  Boston  in  1823.  Parkman's  life  from  early  childhood 
was  a  preparation  for  his  future  work,  and  when  a  mere 
lad  at  college,  he  had  decided  to  write  a  history  of  the 
French  and  Indian  War.  He  was  a  delicate  child,  and  at 
the  age  of  eight  was  sent  to  live  with  his  grandfather,  who 
owned  at  Medway,  near  Boston,  a  vast  tract  of  woodland. 
The  boy  roamed  at  will  through  these  forests,  and  be 
gan  to  amass  that  wood  lore  of  which  his  histories  hold 
such  rich  stores.  At  Harvard  he  overworked  in  the  gymna 
sium  with  the  mistaken  purpose  of  strengthening  himself 
for  a  life  on  the  frontier. 

In  1846,  two  years  after  graduation,  he  took  his  famous 
trip  out  west  over  the  Oregon  Trail,  where  he  hunted  buffalo 
on  the  plains,  dragged  his  horse  through  the  canyons  to 
escape  hostile  Indians,  lived  in  the  camp  of  the  warlike 
Dacota  tribe,  and  learned  by  bitter  experience  the  privations 
of  primitive  life. 

His  health  was  permanently  impaired  by  the  trip.  He 
was  threatened  with  absolute  blindness,  and  was  compelled 
to  have  all  his  notes  read  to  him  and  to  dictate  his  histories. 
For  years  he  was  forbidden  literary  work  on  account  of 
insomnia  and  intense  cerebral  pain  which  threatened  in 
sanity,  and  on  account  of  lameness  he  was  long  confined  to 
a  wheel  chair.  He  rose  above  every  obstacle,  however, 
and  with  silent  fortitude  bore  his  sufferings,  working  when 
ever  he  could,  if  for  only  a  bare  half  hour  at  a  time. 

His  amazing  activity  during  his  trips,  both  in  America 
and  abroad,  is  shown  in  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society  Library,  which  contains  almost  two  hundred  folio 
volumes,  which  he  had  experts  copy  from  original  sources. 
With  few  exceptions,  he  visited  every  spot  which  he  de- 


THE  HISTORIANS 


271 


scribed,  and  saw  the  life  of  nearly  every  tribe  of  Indians. 
His  battle  with  ill  health,  his  strength  of  character,  and 
his  energetic  first-hand  study  of  Indian  and  pioneer  life 
are  remarkable  in  the  history  of  American  men  of  letters. 
He  died  near  Boston  in  1893. 

Because  of  their  subject  matter,  Parkman's  works  are  of 
unusual  interest  to  Americans.     When  he  returned  from 
his   pioneer  western   trip,   he   wrote   a 
simple,  straightforward  account, 
which  was  in  1849  published  in 
book  form,  under  the  title   of 
The    California    and    Oregon 
Trail.    This  book  remains  the 
most  trustworthy,  as  well  ds 
the  most  entertaining,  account 
of     travel     in     the     unsettled 
Northwest  of  that  time.    Indians, 
big  game,  and  adventures  enough 
to  satisfy  any  reasonable  boy  may  be 
found  in  this  book.  FRANCIS  PARKMAN 

His  histories  cover  the  period  from  the  early  French 
settlements  in  the  New  World  to  the  victory  of  the  English 
over  the  French  and  Indian  allies.  The  titles  of  his  sepa 
rate  works,  given  in  their  chronological  order,  are  as  fol 
lows  :  — 

The  Pioneers  of  France  in  the  New  World  (1865)  de 
scribes  the  experiences  of  the  early  French  sailors  and 
explorers  off  the  Newfoundland  coast  and  along  the  St. 
Lawrence  River. 

The  Jesuits  in  North  America  in  the  Seventeenth  Century 
(1867)  tells  of  the  work  of  the  self-forgetting  Jesuit 
Fathers  in  their  mission  of  mercy  and  conversion  among  the 
Indians.  Fifty  pages  of  the  Introduction  give  an  account 


272  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

of  the  religion,  festivities,  superstitions,  burials,  sacrifices, 
and  military  organization  of  the  Indians. 

La  Salle,  or  the  Discovery  of  the  Great  West  (1869),  is 
the  story  of  La  Salle's  heroic  endeavors  and  sufferings 
while  exploring  the  West  and  the  Mississippi  River. 

The  Old  Regime  in  Canada  (1874)  presents  the  internal 
conflicts  and  the  social  development  of  Canada  in  the  seven 
teenth  century. 

Count  Frontenac  and  New  France  under  Louis  XI  V.(\  877) 
continues  the  history  of  Canada  as  a  French  dependency, 
and  paints  in  a  lively  manner  Count  Frontenac's  character, 
his  popularity  with  the  Indians,  and  his  methods  of  win 
ning  laurels  for  France. 

A  Half  Century  of  Conflict  (1892)  depicts  the  sharp  en 
counter  between  the  French  and  English  for  the  possession 
of  the  country,  and  the  terrible  deeds  of  the  Indians  against 
their  hated  foes,  the  English. 

Montcalm  and  Wolfe  (1884)  paints  the  final  scenes  of 
the  struggle  between  France  and  England,  closing  practi 
cally  with  the  fall  of  Quebec. 

The  History  of  tlie  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac  (1851)  shows 
one  more  desperate  attempt  of  a  great  Indian  chief  to 
combine  the  tribes  of  his  people  and  drive  out  the  English. 
The  volume  closes  with  the  general  smoking  of  the  pipe  of 
peace  and  the  swearing  of  allegiance  to  England.  The 
first  forty-five  pages  describe  the  manners  and  customs  of 
the  Indian  tribes  east  of  the  Mississippi. 

The  general  title,  France  and  England  in  North  America, 
indicates  the  subject  matter  of  all  this  historical  work.  The 
central  theme  of  the  whole  series  is  the  struggle  between 
the  French  and  English  for  this  great  American  continent. 
The  trackless  forests,  the  Great  Lakes,  the  untenanted 
shores  of  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Mississippi  form  an 


THE   HISTORIANS 


273 


impressive  background  for  the  actors  in  this  drama,  —  the 
Indians,  traders,  self-sacrificing  priests,  and  the  French  and 
English  contending  for  one  of  the  greatest  prizes  of  the 
world. 

In  his  manner  of  presenting  the  different  ideals  and 
civilizations  of  England  and  France  in  this  struggle,  he 
shows  keen  analytical  power  and  strong  philosophical 
grasp.  He  is  accurate  in  his  details,  and  he  summarizes 
the  results  of  economic  and  religious  forces  in  the  strictly 
modern  spirit.  At  the  same  time,  these  histories  read  like 
novels  of  adventure,  so  vivid  and  lively  is  the  action.  While 
scholars  commend  his  reliability  in  dealing  with  facts,  boys 
enjoy  his  vivid  stories  of  heroism,  sacrifice,  religious  en 
thusiasm,  Indian  craft,  and  military  maneuvering.  The 
one  who  begins  with  The  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,  for  in 
stance,  will  be  inclined  to  read  more  of  Parkman. 

In  the  first  volumes  the  style  is  clear,  nervous,  and  a 
trifle  ornate.  His  facility  in  expression  increased  with  his 
years,  so  that  in  Montcalm  and  Wolfe  he  has  a  mellowness 
and  dignity  that  place  him  beside  the  best  American  prose 
writers.  Although  Prescott's  work  is  more  full  of  color,  he 
does  not  surpass  Parkman  in  the  presentation  of  graphic 
pictures.  Parkman  has  neither  the  solemn  grandeur  of 
Prescott  nor  the  rapid  eloquence  of  Motley,  but  Parkman 
has  unique  merits  of  his  own,  —  the  freshness  of  the  pine 
woods,  the  reality  and  vividness  of  an  eyewitness,  an  ele 
mental  strength  inherent  in  the  primitive  nature  of  his  novel 
subject.  He  secured  his  material  at  first  hand  in  a  way 
that  cannot  be  repeated.  Parkman's  prose  presents  in  a 
simple,  lucid,  but  vigorous  manner  the  story  of  the  over 
throw  of  the  French  by  the  English  in  the  struggle  for  a 
mighty  continent.  As  a  result  of  this  contest,  Puritan 
England  left  its  lasting  impress  upon  this  new  land. 


274  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

ENGLISH   LITERATURE   OF  THE   PERIOD 

Most  of  the  work  of  the  great  New  England  group  of 
writers  was  done  during  the  Victorian  age  —  a  time  prolific 
of  famous  English  authors.  The  greatest  of  the  English 
writers  were  Thomas  Carlyle  (1795-1881),  whose  Sartor 
Resartus  and  Heroes  and  Hero  Worship  proved  a  stimulus 
to  Emerson  and  to  many  other  Americans;  Lord  Macaulay 
(1800-1859),  whose  Essays  and  History  of  England,  re 
markable  for  their  clearness  and  interest,  affected  either 
directly  or  indirectly  the  prose  style  of  numberless  writers 
in  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century;  John  Ruskin 
(1819-1900),  the  apostle  of  the  beautiful  and  of  more  ideal 
social  relations;  Matthew  Arnold  (1822-1888),  the  great 
analytical  critic;  Charles  Dickens  (1812-1870),  whose 
novels  of  the  lower  class  of  English  life  are  remarkable 
for  vigor,  optimism,  humor,  the  power  to  caricature,  and  to 
charm  the  masses;  William  Makepeace  Thackeray  (1811- 
1863),  whose  novels,  like  Vanity  Fair,  remain  unsurpassed 
for  keen  satiric  analysis  of  the  upper  classes  ;  and  George 
Eliot  (1819-1880),  whose  realistic  stories  of  middle  class 
life  show  a  new  art  in  tracing  the  growth  and  development 
of  character  instead  of  merely  presenting  it  with  the  fixity 
of  a  portrait.  To  this  list  should  be  added  Charles  Darwin 
(1809-1882),  whose  Origin  of  Species  (1859)  affected  so 
much  of  the  thought  of  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century. 

The  two  greatest  poets  of  this  time  were  Alfred  Tennyson 
( 1 809-1 892)  and  Robert  Browning  ( 1 8 1 2-1 889).   Browning's 
greatest  poetry  aims  to  show  the  complex  development  of 
human  souls,  to  make  us  understand  that :  — 
"  He  fixed  thee  'mid  this  dance 
Of  plastic  circumstance." * 

1  Radbi  Ben  Ezra. 


LEADING  HISTORICAL  FACTS  275 

His  influence  on  the  American  poets  of  this  group  was 
very  slight.  Whittier's  comment  on  Browning's  Men  and 
Women  is  amusing  :  — 

"  I  have  only  dipped  into  it,  here  and  there,  but  it  is  not  exactly 
comfortable  reading.  It  seemed  to  me  like  a  galvanic  battery  in  full 
play  —  its  spasmodic  utterances  and  intense  passion  make  me  feel  as> 
if  I  had  been  taking  a  bath  among  electric  eels." 

Tennyson  through  his  artistic  workmanship  and  poetry  o£ 
nature  exerted  more  influence.  His  Arthurian  legends,, 
especially  Sir  Galahad  (1842),  seem  to  have  suggested 
Lowell's  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal (1848).  The  New  Eng 
land  poets  in  general  looked  back  to  Burns,  Wordsworth, 
Keats,  and  other  members  of  the  romantic  school  of  poets. 
Lowell  was  a  great  admirer  -of  Keats,  and  in  early  life, 
like  Whittier,  was  an  imitator  of  Burns. 


LEADING  HISTORICAL  FACTS 

As  might  be  inferred  from  the  literature  of  this  period 
—  from  Whittier's  early  poems,  Mrs.  Stowe's  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,  Lowell's  The  Biglow  Papers,  and  from  emphatic 
statements  in  Emerson  and  Thoreau  —  the  question  of 
slavery  was  the  most  vital  one  of  the  time.  From  1 849, 
when  California,  recently  settled  by  gold  seekers,  applied 
for  admission  as  a  state,  with  a  constitution  forbidding 
slavery,  until  the  end  of  the  Civil  War  in  1865,  slavery  was 
the  irrepressible  issue  of  the  republic.  The  Fugitive  Slave 
Law,  which  was  passed  in  1850  to  secure  the  return  of 
slaves  from  any  part  of  the  United  States,  was  very  un 
popular  at  the  North  and  did  much  to  hasten  the  war,  as 
did  also  the  decision  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court 
in  the  Dred  Scott  case  (1857),  affirming  that  slaves  were 


276  THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

property,  not  persons,  and  could  be  moved  the  same  as 
cattle  from  one  state  to  another.  Various  compromise 
measures  between  the  North  and  the  South  were  vainly 
tried.  When  Abraham  Lincoln  was  elected  President  in 
1860,  South  Carolina  led  the  South  in  seceding  from  the 
Union.  In  1861  began  the  Civil  War,  which  lasted  four 
years  and  resulted  in  the  restoration  of  the  Union  and  the 
freeing  of  the  slaves. 

Before  Holmes,  the  last  member  of  this  New  England 
group,  died  in  1894,  both  North  and  South  had  more  than 
regained  the  material  prosperity  which  they  had  enjoyed 
before  the  war.  The  natural  resources  of  the  country 
were  so  great  and  the  energy  of  her  sons  so  remarkable 
that  not  only  was  the  waste  of  property  soon  repaired,  but 
a  degree  of  prosperity  was  reached  which  would  probably 
never  have  been  possible  without  the  war.  More  than 
one  million  human  beings  perished  in  the  strife.  Many  of 
these  were  from  the  more  cultured  and  intellectual  classes 
on  both  sides.  Centuries  will  not  repair  that  waste  of 
creative  ability  in  either  section.  France,  after  the  lapse 
of  more  than  two  hundred  years,  is  still  suffering  from  the 
loss  of  her  Huguenots.  It  is  impossible  to  compute  what 
American  literature  has  lost  as  a  result  of  this  war,  not 
only  from  the  double  waste  involved  in  turning  the  energies 
of  men  to  destruction  and  subsequently  to  the  necessary 
repairs,  but  also  from  the  sacrifice  of  life  of  those  who 
might  have  displayed  genius  with  the  pen  or  furnished  an 
encouraging  audience  to  the  gifted  ones  who  did  not  speak 
because  there  were  none  to  hear. 

The  development  of  inventions  during  this  period  revolu 
tionized  the  world's  progress.  Cities  in  various  parts  of 
the  country  had  begun  to  communicate  with  each  other 
by  electricity,  when  Thoreau  was  living  at  Walden  ;  when 


LEADING  HISTORICAL   FACTS 


277 


Emerson  was  writing  the  second  series  of  his  Essays ; 
Longfellow,  his  lines  about  cares  "  folding  their  tents  like 
the  Arabs  and  as  silently  stealing  away " ;  Lowell,  his 
verses  To  the  Dandelion  ;  and  Holmes,  his  complaint  that 
his  humor  was  diminishing  his  practice.  By  the  time 
that  Longfellow  had  finished  The  Courtship  of  Miles 
Standish,  and  Holmes  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table, 
messages  had  been  cabled  across  the  Atlantic.  A  com 
parison  with  an  event  of  the  preceding  period  will  show  the 
importance  of  this  method  of  communication.  The  treaty 
of  peace  to  end  the  last  war  with  England  was  signed  in  Bel 
gium,  December  24,  1814.  On  January  8,  1815,  the  bloody 
battle  of  New  Orleans  was  fought.  News  of  this  fight 
did  not  reach  Washington  until  February  4.  A  week  later 
information  of  the  treaty  of  peace  was  received  at  New 
York.  A  new  process  of  welding  the  world  together  had 
begun,  and  this  welding  was  further  strengthened  by  the 
invention  of  that  modern  miracle,  the  telephone,  in  1876. 

The  result  of  the  battle  between  the  ironclads,  the  Monitor 
and  the  Merrimac  ( 1 862),  led  to  a  change  in  the  navies  of  the 
entire  world.  Alaska  was  bought  in  1867,  and  added  an 
area  more  than  two  thirds  as  large  as  the  United  States 
comprised  in  1783.  The  improvement  and  extension  of 
education,  the  interest  in  social  reform,  the  beginning  of 
the  decline  of  the  "  let  alone  doctrine,"  the  shortening  of  the 
hours  of  labor,  and  the  consequent  increase  in  time  for 
self -improvement,  —  are  all  especially  important  steps  of 
progress  in  this  period. 

Authors  could  no  longer  complain  of  small  audiences. 
At  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  the  United  States  had  a 
population  of  thirty-one  millions,  while  the  combined  popu 
lation  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  was  then  only  twenty- 
nine  millions.  Before  Holmes  passed  away  in  1894  the 


278          THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

population  of  1860  had  doubled.  The  passage  of  an  in 
ternational  copyright  law  in  1891  at  last  freed  American 
authors  from  the  necessity  of  competing  with  pirated  edi 
tions  of  foreign  works. 


SUMMARY 

The  great  mid-nineteenth  century  group  of  New  England 
writers  included  Emerson^Thoreau,  Hawthorne,  who  were 
often  called  the  Concord  group,  and  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe, 
Daniel  Webster,  Longfellow,  Whittier,  Lowell,  Holmes, 
and  the  historians,  Prescott,  Motley,  and  Parkman. 

The  causes  of  this  great  literary  awakening  were  in  some 
measure  akin  to  those  which  produced  the  Elizabethan  age, 
—  a  "  re-formation"  ofj^Jigiotis  opinion  and  a  renaissance, 
seen  in  a  broader  culture  which  did  not  neglect  poetry, 
music,  art,  and  the  observation  of  beautiful  things. 

The  philosophy  known  as  transcendentalism  left  its 
impress  on  much  of  the  work  of  this  age.  The  transcen- 
dentalists  believed  that  human  mind  could  "  transcen3 " 
or  pass  beyond  experience  and  form  a  conclusion  which 
was  not  based  on  the  world  of  sense.  They  were  intense 
idealists  and  individualists,  who  despised  imitation  and 
repetition,  who  were  full  of  the  ecstasy  of  discoveries  in  a 
glorious  new  world,  who  entered  into  a  new  companionship 
with  nature,  and  who  voiced  in  ways  as  different  as  The 
Dial  and  Brook  Farm  their  desire  for  an  opportunity  to 
live  in  all  the  faculties  of  the  soul. 

The  fact  that  the  thought  of  the  age  was  specially  modi 
fied  by  the  question  of  slavery  is  shown  in  Webster's  ora 
tions,  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe's  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  the 
poetry  of  Whittier  and  Lowell,  and  to  a  less  degree  in  the 
work  of  Emerson,  Thoreau,  and  Longfellow. 


SUMMARY  27Q- 

We  have  found  that  Emerson's  aim,  shown  in  his  Essays. 
and  all  his  prose  work,  is  the  moral  development  of  the 
individual,  the  acquisition  of  self-reliance,  character,  spirit 
uality^.  Some  of  his  nature  poetry  ranks  with  the  best  pro 
duced  in  America.  Tlioreau,  the  poet-naturalist,  shows  how 
to  find  enchantment  in  the  world  of  nature.  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne,  one  of  the  great  romance  writers  of  the  world, 
has  given  the  Puritan  almost  as  great  a  place  in  literature 
as  in  history.  In  his  short  stories  and  romances,  this  great 
artist  paints  little  except  the  trial  and  moral  development 
of  human  souls  in  a  world  where  the  Ten  Commandments 
are  supreme. 

Longfellow  taught  the  English-speaking  world  to  love 
simple  poetry.  He  mastered  the  difficult  art  of  making 
the  commonplace  seem  attractive  and  of  speaking  to  the 
great  common  heart.  His  ability  to  tell  in  verse  stories 
like  Evangeline  and  Hiawatha  remains  unsurpassed 
among  our  singers.  Whittier  was  the  great  antislavery 
poet  of  the  North.  Like  Longfellow,  he  spoke  simply  but 
more  intensely  to  that  overwhelming  majority  whose  lives 
stand  most  in  need  of  poetry.  His  Snow-Bound  makes  us 
feel  the  moral  greatness  of  simple  New  England  life. 
The  versatile  Lowell  has  written  exquisite  nature  poetry 
in  his  lyrics  and  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal  and  The  Biglow 
Papers.  He  has  produced  America's  best  humorous  verse 
in  The  Biglow  Papers  and  A  Fable  for  Critics.  He  is  a 
great  critic,  and  his  prose  criticism  in  Among  My  Books 
and  the  related  volumes  is  stimulating  and  interesting. 
His  political  prose,  of  which  the  best  specimen  is  Democracy, 
is  remarkable  for  its  high  ideals.  Holmes  is  especially 
distinguished  for  his  humor  in  such  poems  as  The  Deacon's 
Masterpiece,  or  the  Wonderful  One-Hoss  Shay  and  for  the 
pleasant  philosophy  and  humor  in  such  artistic  prose  as 


280  THE   NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

The  Atitocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table.  He  is  the  only 
member  of  this  group  who  often  wrote  merely  to  entertain, 
but  his  Chambered  Nautilus  shows  that  he  also  had  a  more 
serious  aim. 

When  we  come  to  the  historians,  we  find  that  Prescott 
wrote  of  the  romantic  achievements  of  Spain  in  the  days  of 
her  glory;  Motley,  of  the  struggles  of  the  Dutch  Republic 
to  keep  religious  and  civil  liberty  from  disappearing  from 
this  earth ;  Parkman,  of  the  contest  of  the  English  against 
the  French  and  Indians  to  decide  whether  the  institutions 
and  literature  of  North  America  should  be  French  or 
English. 

This  New  England  literature  is  most  remarkable  for  its 
moral  quality,  its  gospel  of  self-reliance,  its  high  ideals,  its 
call  to  the  soul  to  build  itself  more  stately  mansions. 

REFERENCES   FOR   FURTHER   STUDY 
HISTORICAL 

For  contemporary' English  history  consult  the  histories  mentioned  on 
p.  60.  The  chapter  on  Victorian  literature  in  the  author's  History 
of  English  Literature  gives  the  trend  of  literary  movements  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Atlantic  during  this  period. 

Contemporary  American  history  may  be  traced  in  the  general  works 
listed  on  p.  61,  or  in  Woodrow  Wilson's  Division  and  Reunwn. 

LITERARY 

GENERAL  WORKS 

In  addition  to  the  works  of  Richardson,  Wendell,  and  Trent  (k .  61), 
the  following  may  be  consulted  :  — 
Nicholas  American  Literature. 

Churton  Collins's  The  Poets  and  Poetry  of  America. 
Vincent's  American  Literary  Masters. 
Stedman's  Poets  of  America. 
Onderdonk's  History  of  American  Verse- 


REFERENCES  FOR  FURTHER  STUDY  281 

Lawton's  The  New  England  Poets. 

Erskine's  Leading  American  Novelists.    (Mrs.  Stowe,  Hawthorne.) 

Brownell's   American   Prose  Masters.      (Especially   Emerson   and 
Lowell.) 

Howells's  Literary  Friends  anl  Acquaintance.  (Longfellow,  Lowell, 
Holmes.) 

SPECIAL  WORKS 

Froth  ingham's  Transcendentalism  in  New  England. 

D9wden's  Studies  in  Literature.     (Transcendentalism.) 

Swift's  Brook  Farm. 

Fields's  The  Life  and  Letters  of  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe. 

Lodge's  Daniel  Webster. 

Woodberry's  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson. 

Holmes's  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson. 

Garnett's  Life  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson. 
.   Sanborn's  Ralph  Waldo  Emerso>n. 

Cabot's  A  Memoir  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  2  vols. 

E.  W.  Emerson's  Emerson  in  Concord. 

Lowell's  Emerson  the  Lecturer,  in  Works,  Vol.  I. 

Woodbury's  Talks  with  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson. 

Sanborn's  Henry  David  Thoreau. 

Salt's  Life  of  Henry  David  Thoreau. 

Channing's  Thoreau,  The  Poet  Naturalist. 

Marble's  Thoreau,  His  Home,  Friends^  and  Books. 

James  Russell  Lowell's  Thoreau,  in  Works,  Vol.  I. 

Burroughs's  Indoor  Studies,  Chap.  I.,  Henry  D.  Thoreau. 

Woodberry's  Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 

Henry  James's  Hawthorne. 

Conway's  Life  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 

Fields's  Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 

Julian  Hawthorne's  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and  his  Wife. 

George  Parsons  Lathrop's  A  Study  of  Hawthorne. 

Bridge's  Personal  Recollections  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 

Rose  Hawthorne  Lathrop's  Memories  of  Hawthorne. 

Julian  Hawthorne's  Hawthorne  and  his  Circle. 

Gates's  Studies  and  Appreciations.    (Hawthorne.) 

Canby's  The  Short  Story  in  English,  Chap.  XII.     (Hawthorne.) 

Samuel  Longfellow's  Life  of  Henry    Wadsworth   Longfellow  with 
Extracts  from  his  Journals  and  Correspondence,  3  vols. 


282          THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

Higginson's  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow. 

Carpenter's  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow. 

Robertson's  Life  of  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow. 

Carpenter's  John  Greenleaf  Whittier. 

Higginson's/<A  Greenleaf  Whittier. 

Perry's  John  Greenleaf  Whittier. 

Pickard's  Life  and  Letters  of  John  Greenleaf  Whittier,  2  vols. 

Pickard's  Whittier-Land. 

Greenslefs/flw^r  Russell  Lowell,  his  Life  and  Work. 

Male's  James  Russell  Lotvell.     (Beacon  Biographies.} 

Scudder's  James  Russell  Lowell,  A  Biography,  2  vols. 

Hale's  James  Russell  Lowell  and  his  Friends. 

James  Russell  Lowell's  Letters,  edited  by  Charles  Eliot  Norton. 

Morse's  Life  and  Letters  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  2  vols. 

Haweis's  American  Humorists. 

Ticknor's  Life  of  William  Hickling  Prescott. 

Ogden's  William  Hickling  Prescott. 

Peck's  William  Hickling  Prescott. 

Holmes's/^^  Lothrop  Motley,  A  Memoir. 

Curtis's  The  Correspondence  of  John  Lothrop  Motley. 

Sedgwick's  Francis  Parkman. 

Farnham's  A  Life  of  Francis  Parkman. 


SUGGESTED   READINGS 

Since  the  works  of  the  authors  of  the  New  England  group  are  nearly 
always  accessible,  it  is  not  usually  necessary  to  specify  editions  or  the 
exact  place  where  the  readings  may  be  found.  Those  who  prefer  to 
use  books  of  selections  will  find  that  Page's  The  Chief  American  Poets, 
713  pp.,  contains  nearly  all  of  the  poems  recommended  for  read 
ing.  Prose  selections  may  be  found  in  Carpenter's  American  Prose, 
and  still  more  extended  selections  in  Stedman  and  Hutchinson's 
Library  of  American  Literature. 

Transcendentalism  and  The  Dial.  —  Read  Emerson's  lecture  on  The 
Transcendentalist,  published  in  the  volume  called  Nature,  Addresses, 
and  Lectures.  The  Dial  is  very  rare  and  difficult  to  obtain  outside  of  a 
large  library.  George  Willis  Cooke  has  collected  in  one  volume  under 
the  title,  The  Poets  of  Transcendentalism,  An  Anthology  (1903),  341  pp., 


SUGGESTED   READINGS  283 

some  of  the  best  of  the  poems  published  in  The  Dial,  as  well  as  much 
transcendental  verse  that  appeared  elsewhere. 

Slavery  and  Oratory.  —  Selections  from  Uncle  Toni's  Cabin  may  be 
found  in  Carpenter,  312-322 ;  S.  &  H.,  VII.,  132-144.  Webster's 
Reply  to  Hayne  is  given  in  Johnston's  American  Orations,  Vol.  I., 
248-302.  There  are  excellent  selections  from  Webster  in  Carpenter, 
105-118,  and  S.  &  H.,  IV.,  462-469.  Selections  from  the  other  orators 
mentioned  may  be  found  in  Johnston  and  S.  &  H. 

Emerson.  —  Read  from  the  volume,  Nature,  Addresses,  and  Lectures, 
the  chapters  called  Nature,  Beauty,  Idealism,  and  the  "  literary  declara 
tion  of  independence  "  in  his  lecture,  The  American  Scholar.  From 
the  various  other  volumes  of  his  Essays,  read  Self -Reliance,  Friendship, 
Character,  Civilization. 

From  his  nature  poetry,  read  To  Ellen  at  the  South,  The  Rhodora, 
Each  and  All,  The  Humble-Bee,  Woodnotes,  The  Snow-Storm.  For 
a  poetical  exposition  of  his  philosophy,  read  The  Problem,  The  Sphinx, 
and  Brahma. 

Thoreau.  —  If  possible,  read  all  of  Walden  ;  if  not,  Chaps.  I.,  Economy, 
IV.,  Sounds,  and  XV.,  Winter  Animals  (Riverside  Literature  Series). 
From  the  volume  called  Excursions,  read  the  essay  Wild  Apples. 
Many  will  be  interested  to  read  here  and  there  from  his  Notes  on  New 
England  Birds  and  from  the  four  volumes,  compiled  from  his  Journal, 
describing  the  seasons. 

Hawthorne.  —  At  least  one  of  each  of  the  different  types  of  his  short 
stories  should  be  read.  His  power  in  impressing  allegorical  or  symbolic 
truth  may  be  seen  in  The  Snow  Image  or  The  Great  Stone  Face.  As  a 
specimen  of  his  New  England  historical  tales,  read  one  or  more  of  the 
following:  The  Gentle  Boy,  The  Maypole  of  Merry  Mount,  Lady  Elea- 
nore^s  Mantle^  or  even  the  fantastic  Young  Goodman  Brown,  which 
presents  the  Puritan  idea  of  witchcraft.  For  an  example  of  his  sketches 
or  narrative  essays,  read  The  Old  Manse  (the  first  paper  in  Mosses 
from  an  Old  iManse)  or  the  Introduction  to  The  Scarlet  Letter. 

The  Scarlet  Letter  may  be  left  for  mature  age,  but  The  House  of 
the  Seven  Gables  should  be  read  by  all. 

From  his  books  for  children,  The  Golden  Touch  (Wonder  Book} 
at  least  should  be  read,  no  matter  how  old  the  reader. 

Longfellow.  —  His  best  narrative  poem  is  Hiawatha,  and  its  strongest 
part  is  The  famine,  beginning  :  — 

"  Oh,  the  long  and  dreary  Winter!  " 


284          THE  NEW  ENGLAND  GROUP 

The  opening  lines  of  Evangeline  should  be  read  for  both  the  beauty 
of  the  poetry  and  the  novelty  of  the  meter.  The  first  four  sections  of 
The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish  should  be  read  for  its  pictures  of 
the  early  days  of  the  first  Pilgrim  settlement.  His  best  ballads  are 
The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus,  The  Skeleton  in  Armor,  Paul  Revered 
Ride,  and  The  Birds  of  Killingworth.  For  specimens  of  his  simple 
lyrics,  which  have  had  such  a  wide  appeal,  read  A  Psalm  of  Life,  The 
Ladder  of  St.  Augustine,  The  Rainy  Day,  The  Day  is  Done,  Daybreak, 
Resignation,  Maidenhood,  My  Lost  Youth. 

Whittier.  —  Read  the  whole  of  Snow-Bound,  and  for  specimens  of 
his  .shorter  lyrics,  Ichabod,  The  Lost  Occasion,  My  Playmate,  Telling  the 
Bees,  The  Barefoot  Boy,  In  School  Days,  My  Triumph,  An  Autograph, 
and  The  Eternal  Goodness.  His  best  ballads  are  MaudMuller,  Skipper 
Ireson's  Ride,  and  Cassandra  Southwick. 

Lowell.  —  From  among  his  shorter  lyrical  poems,  read  Our  Love  is 
not  a  Fading  Earthly  Flower,  To  the  Dandelion,  The  Present  Crisis^ 
The  First  Snow-Fall,  After  the  Burial,  For  an  Autograph,  Prelude  to 
Part  I.  of  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal.  From  The  Biglow  Papers,  read 
What  Mr.  Robinson  Thinks  (No.  III.,  First  Series'),  The  Courtiri1 
{Introduction  to  Second  Series},  Sunthiri*  in  the  Pastoral  Line  (No. 
VI.,  Second  Series}.  From  A  Fable  for  Critics,  read  the  lines  on 
Cooper,  Poe,  and  Irving. 

The  five  ot  Lowell's  greater  literary  essays  mentioned  on  page  254 
show  his  critical  powers  at  their  best.  The  student  who  wishes  shorter 
selections  may  choose  those  paragraphs  which  please  him  and  any 
thoughts  from  the  political  essay  Democracy  which  he  thinks  his  neigh 
bor  should  know. 

Holmes.  —  Read  The  Deacons  Masterpiece,  or  the  Wonderful  One- 
Hoss  Shay,  The  Ballad  of  the  Oysterman,  The  Boys,  The  Last  Leaf, 
and  The  Chambered  Nautilus.  From  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast 
Table,  the  student  may  select  any  pages  that  he  thinks  his  friends  would 
enjoy  hearing. 

The  Historians.  —  Selections  from  Prescott,  Motley,  and  Parkman 
may  be  found  in  Carpenter's  American  Prose. 


QUESTIONS  AND  SUGGESTIONS 

Poetry.  —  Compare  Emerson's  Woodnotes  with  Bryant's  Thanatopsis 
and  A  Forest  Hymn.     Make  a  comparison  of  these  three  poems  of 


QUESTIONS  AND   SUGGESTIONS  285 

motion  •,  The  Evening  Wind  (Bryant),  The  Humble-Bee  (Emerson), 
and  Daybreak  (Longfellow),  and  give  reasons  for  your  preference. 
Compare  in  like  manner  The  Snow-Storm  (Emerson),  the  first  sixty-five 
lines  of  Snow-Bound  (Whittier),  and  The  First  Snow-Fall  (Lowell). 
To  which  of  these  three  simple  lyrics  of  nature  would  you  award  the 
palm:  To  the  Fringed  Gentian  (Bryant),  The  Rhodora  (Emerson) 
To  the  Dandelion  (Lowell)  ?  After  making  your  choice  of  these  three 
poems,  compare  it  with  these  two  English  lyrics  of  the  same  class :  To 
a  Mountain  Daisy  (Burns),  Daffodils  (Wordsworth,  the  poem  begin 
ning  "  I  wandered  lonely  as  a  cloud"),  and  again  decide  which  poem 
pleases  you  most. 

Compare  the  humor  of  these  two  short  poems  describing  a  wooing : 
The  Courtin1  (Lowell),  The  Ballad  of  the  Oysterman  (Holmes). 
Discuss  the  ideals  of  these  four  poems  :  A  Psalm  of  Life  (Longfellow), 
For  an  Autograph  (Lowell),  An  Autograph  (Whittier),  The  Chambered 
Nautilus  (Holmes). 

What  difference  in  the  mental  characteristics  of  the  authors  do  these 
two  retrospective  poems  show  :  My  Lost  Youth  (Longfellow),  Memories 
(Whittier)  ?     For  a  more  complete  answer  to  this  question,  compare 
the  girls  in  these  two  poems  :  Maidenhood  (Longfellow)  :  — 
'•  Maiden,  with  the  meek,  brown  eyes, 
In  whose  orbs  a  shadow  lies," 

and  In  School  Days  (Whittier),  beginning  with  the  lines  where  he  says 
of  the  winter  sun  long  ago  :  — 

"  It  touched  the  tangled  golden  curls, 
And  brown  eyes  full  of  grieving." 

Matthew  Arnold,  that  severe  English  critic,  called  one  of  these  poems 
perfect  of  its  kind,  and  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  cried  over  one  of  them. 
The  student  who  reads  these  carefully  is  entitled  to  rely  on  his  own 
judgment,  without  verifying  which  poem  Arnold  and  Holmes  had  in 
mind. 

Compare  Longfellow's  ballads :  The  Skeleton  in  Armor,  The  Birds 
of  Killingworth,  and  The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus,  with  Whiitier's 
Skipper  Ireson's  Ride,  Cassandra  Southwick,  and  Maud  Muller. 

Compare  Whittier's  Snow-Bound  with  Burns's  Cotter's  Saturday 
Night.  In  WhittierV  poem,  what  group  of  lines  descriptive  of  (a) 
nature,  and  (£)  of  inmates  of  the  household  pleases  you  most? 

What  parts  of  Hiawatha  do  you  consider  the  best  ?  What  might 
be  omitted  without  great  'damage  to  the  poem  ? 


286  THE  NEW  ENGLAND   GROUP 

In  The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish,  which  incidents  or  pictures  of 
the  life  of  the  Pilgrims  appeal  most  strongly  to  you? 

What  was  the  underlying  purpose  in  writing  The  Bigloiv  Papers  and 
One-Hoss  Shay  ?  Do  we  to-day  read  them  chiefly  for  this  purpose  or 
for  other  reasons  ?  In  what  does  the  humor  of  each  consist  ? 

Prose.  —  Why  is  it  said  that  Mrs.  Stowe  showed  a  knowledge  of 
psychological  values  ?  What  were  the  chief  causes  of  the  influence  of 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  ? 

What  are  Webster's  chief  characteristics  ?  Why  does  he  retain  his 
preeminence  among  American  orators  ? 

What  transcendental  qualities  does  Emerson's  prose  show  ?  From 
any  of  his  Essays  select  thoughts  which  justify  TyndalFs  (p.  192) 
statement  about  Emerson's  stimulating  power.  What  passages  show 
him  to  be  a  great  moral  teacher? 

What  was  Thoreau's  object  in  going  to  Walden?  Of  what  is  he 
the  interpreter  ?  What  was  his  mission?  What  passages  in  Walden 
please  you  most  ?  What  is  the  reason  for  such  a  steady  increase  in 
Thoreau's  popularity  ? 

Point  out  the  allegory  or  symbolism  in  any  of  Hawthorne's  tales. 
Which  of  his  short  stories  do  you  like  best  ?  What  is  Hawthorne's 
special  aim  in  The  Snow  Image  and  The  Gentle  Boy  /  What  qualities 
give  special  charm  to  sketches  like  The  Old  Manse  and  the  Introduc 
tion  to  The  Scarlet  Letter?  What  is  the  underlying  motive  to  be 
worked  out  in  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables  ?  Why  is  it  said  that 
the  Ten  Commandments  reign  supreme  in  Hawthorne's  world  of  fiction  ? 
Was  he  a  classicist  or  a  romanticist  (p.  219)  ?  What  qualities  do  you 
notice  in  his  style  ? 

In  Lowell's  critical  essays,  what  unusual  turns  of  thought  do  you  find 
to  challenge  your  attention  ?  Does  he  employ  humor  in  his  serious 
criticism  ? 

What  most  impresses  you  in  reading  selections  from  The  Autocrat 
of  the  Breakfast  Table,  the  humor,  sprightliness,  and  variety  of  the 
thought,  or  the  style  ?  What  especially  satisfactory  pages  have  you 
found  ? 

Make  a  comparison  (a)  of  the  picturesqueness  and  color,  (£)  of  the 
energy  of  presentation,  {c}  of  the  power  to  develop  interest,  and 
(*/)  of  the  style,  shown  in  the  selections  which  you  have  chosen  from 
Prescott,  Motley,  and  Parkman.  Compare  their  style  with  that  of 
Macaulay  in  his  History  of  England. 


CHAPTER   V 
SOUTHERN   LITERATURE 

Plantation  Life  and  its  Effect  upon  Literature.  —  Before 
the  war  the  South  was  agricultural.  The  wealth  was  in 
the  hands  of  scattered  plantation  owners,  and  less  cen 
tered  in  cities  than  at  the  North.  The  result  was  a  rural 
aristocracy  of  rich  planters,  many  of  them  of  the  highest 
breeding  and  culture.  A  retinue  of  slaves  attended  to 
their  work  and  relieved  them  from  all  manual  labor.  The 
masters  took  an  active  part  jn  public  life,  traveled  and 
entertained  on  a  lavish  scale.  Their  guests  were  usually 
wealthy  men  of  the  same  rank,  who  had  similar  ideals 
and  ambitions.  Gracious  and  attractive  as  this,  life  made 
the  people,  it  did  not  bring  in  new  thought,  outside 
influences,  or  variety.  Men  continued  to  think  like  their 
fatHers.  The  transcendental  movement  which  aroused 
New  England  was  scarcely  felt  as  far  south  as  Virginia. 
The  tide  of  commercial  activity  which  swept  over  the  East 
and  sent  men  to  explore  the  West  did  not  affect  the  charac 
ter  of  life  at  the  South.  It  was  separated  from  every  other 
section  of  the  country  by  a  conservative  spirit,  an  objection 
to  change,  and  a  tendency  toward  aristocracy. 

Such  conditions  retarded  the  growth  of  literature. 
There  were  no  novel  ideas  that  men  felt  compelled  to 
utter,  as  in  New  England.  There  was  little  town  life  to 
bring  together  all  classes  of  men.  Such  life  has  always 
been  found  essential  to  literary  production.  Finally,  there 
was  inevitably  connected  with  plantation  life  a  serious 
question,  which  occupied  men's  thoughts. 

287 


288  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

Slavery.  —  The  question  that  absorbed  the  attention 
of  the  best  southern  intellect  was  slavery.  In  order  to 
maintain  the  vast  estates  of  the  South,  it  was  necessary  to 
continue  the  institution  of  slavery.  Many  southern  men 
had  been  anxious  to  abolish  it,  but,  as  time  proceeded,  they 
were  less  able  to  see  how  the  step  could  be  taken.  As  a 
Virginian  statesman  expressed  it,  they  were  holding  a 
wolf  by  the  ears,  and  it  was  as  dangerous  to  let  him  go 
as  to  hold  on.  At  the  North,  slavery  was  an  abstract 
question  of  moral  right  or  wrong,  which  inspired  poets  and 
novelists  ;  at  the  South,  slavery  was  a  matter  of  expediency, 
even  of  livelihood.  Instead  of  serving  as  an  incentive  to 
literary  activity,  the  discussion  of  slavery  led  men  farther 
away  from  the  channels  of  literature  into  the  stream  of 
practical  politics. 

Political  versus  Literary  Ambitions. — The  natural  ambi 
tion  of  the  southern  gentleman  was  political.  The  South 
was  proud  of  its  famous  orators  and  generals  in  Revolu 
tionary  times  and  of  its  long  line  of  statesmen  and  Presi 
dents,  who  took  such  a  prominent  part  in  establishing  and 
maintaining  the  republic.  We  have  seen  (p.  68)  that 
Thomas  Jefferson  of  Virginia  wrote  one  of  the  most 
memorable  political  documents  in  the  world,  that  James 
Madison,  a  Virginian  President  of  the  United  States,  aided 
in  producing  the  Federalist  papers  (p.  71),  that  George 
Washington's  Farewell  Address  (p.  100)  deals  with  such 
vital  matters  as  morality  almost  entirely  from  a  political 
point  of  view.  Although  the  South  produced  before  the 
Civil  War  a  world-famous  author  in  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  her 
glorious  achievements  were  nevertheless  mainly  political, 
and  she  especially  desired  to  maintain  her  former  reputa 
tion  in  the  political  world.  The  law  ana  not  literature  was 
theretore  the  avenue  to  the  southerner's  ambition. 


POLITICAL  AMBITIONS  289 

Long  before  the  Civil  War,  slavery  became  an  unusually 
live  subject.  There  was  always  some  political  move  to  dis 
cuss  in  .connection  with  slavery ;  such,  for  instance,  as  the 
constitutional  interpretation  of  the  whole  question,  the 
necessity  of  balancing  the  admission  of  free  and  slave 
states  to  the  Union,  the  war  with  Mexico,  the  division  of 
the  new  territory  secured  in  that  conflict,  the  right  of  a 
state  to  secede  from  the  Union.  Consequently,  in  ante 
bellum  days,  the  brilliant  young  men  of  the  South  had, 
like  their  famous  ancestors  of  Revolutionary  times,  abun 
dance  of  material  for  political  and  legal  exposition,  and 
continued  to  devote  their  attention  to  public  questions,  to 
law,  and  to  oratory,  instead  of  to  pure  literature.  They 
talked  while  the  North  wrote. 

In  the  days  before  the  war,  literature  suffered  also 
because  the  wealthy  classes  at  the  South  did  not  regard  it 
as  a  dignified  profession.  Those  who  could  write  often 
published  their  work  anonymously.  Richard  Henry 
Wilde  (1789-1847),  a  young  lawyer,  wrote  verses  that 
won  Byron's  praise,  and  yet  did  not  acknowledge  them 
until  some  twenty  years  later.  Sometimes  authors  tried 
to  suppress  the  very  work  by  which  their  names  are  to-day 
perpetuated.  When  a  Virginian  found  that  the  writer  of 

"  Thou  wast  lovelier  than  the  roses 

In  their  prime ; 
Thy  voice  excelled  the  closes 
Of  sweetest  rhyme ;  " 

was  his  neighbor,  Philip  Pendleton  Cooke  (1816-1850),  he 
said  to  the  young  poet,  "  I  wouldn't  waste  time  on  a  thing 
like  poetry ;  you  might  make  yourself,  with  all  your  sense 
and  judgment,  a  useful  man  in  settling  neighborhood  dis 
putes."  A  newspaper  in  Richmond,  Virginia,  kept  a 
standing  offer  to  publish  poetry  for  one  dollar  a  line. 


290  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

Educational  Handicaps.  —  Before  the  war  there  was  no 
universal  free  common  school  system,  as  at  present,  to 
prepare  for  higher  institutions.  The  children  of  rich 
families  had  private  tutors,  but  the  poor  frequently  went 
without  any  schooling.  William  Gilmore  Simms  (p.  306) 
says  that  he  "learned  little  or  nothing"  at  a  public 
school,  and  that  not  one  of  his  instructors  could  teach 
him  arithmetic.  Lack  of  common  educational  facilities 
decreased  readers  as  well  as  writers. 

Until  after  the  war,  whatever  literature  was  read  by  the 
cultured  classes  was  usually  English.  The  classical  school 
of  Dryden  and  Pope  and  the  eighteenth  century  English 
essayists  were  especially  popular.  American  literature  was 
generally  considered  trashy  or  unimportant.  So  conserva 
tive  was  the  South  in  its  opinions,  that  individuality  in  liter 
ature  was  often  considered  an  offense  against  good  taste. 
This  was  precisely  the  attitude  of  the  classical  school  in 
England  during  a  large  part  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Until  after  the  Civil  War,  therefore,  the  South  offered  few 
inducements  to  follow  literature  as  a  profession. 

The  New  South.  —  After  the  South  had  passed  through 
the  terrible  struggle  of  the  Civil  War,  in  which  much  of 
her  best  blood  perished,  there  followed  the  tragic  days  of 
the  reconstruction.  These  were  times  of  readjustment, 
when  a  wholly  new  method  of  life  had  to  be  undertaken 
by  a  conservative  people ;  when  the  uncertain  position  of 
the  negro  led  to  frequent  trouble  ;  when  the  unscrupulous 
politician,  guided  only  by  desire  for  personal  gain,  played 
on  the  ignorance  of  the  poor  whites  and  the  enfranchised 
negroes,  and  almost  wrecked  the  commonwealth.  Had 
Lincoln  lived  to  direct  affairs  after  the  war,  much  suffering 
might  have  been  avoided,  and  the  wounds  of  the  South 
might  have  been  more  speedily  healed. 


THE  NEW  SOUTH 


2QI 


These  days,  however,  finally  passed,  and  the  South  began 
to  adapt  herself  to  the  changed  conditions  of  modern  life. 
In  these  years  of  transition  since  the  Civil  War,  a  new 
South  has  been  evolved.  Cities  are  growing  rapidly. 
Some  parts  of  the  South  are  developing  even  faster  than 
any  other  sections  of  the  country.  Men  are  running  mills 
as  well  as  driving  the  plow.  Small  farms  have  often  taken 
the  place  of  the  large  plantation.  A  system  of  free  public 
schools  has  been  developed,  and  compulsory  education  for 
all  has  been  demanded.  Excellent  higher  institutions  of 
learning  have  multiplied.  Writers  and  a  reading  public, 
both  with  progressive  ideals,  have  rapidly  increased.  In 
short,  the  South,  like  the  East  and  the  West,  has  become 
more  democratic  and  industrial,  less  completely  agricul 
tural,  and  has  paid  more  attention  to  the  education  of  the 
masses. 

It  would,  however,  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the 
southern  conservatism,  which  had  been  fostered  for  gen 
erations,  could  at  once  be  effaced.  The  South  still  retains 
much  of  her  innate  love  of  aristocracy,  loyalty  to  tradition, 
disinclination  to  be  guided  by  merely  practical  aims,  and 
aversion  to  rapid  change.  This  condition  is  due  partly  to 
the  fact  that  the  original  conservative  English  stock,  which 
is  still  dominant,  has  been  more  persistent  there  and  less 
modified  by  foreign  immigration. 

Characteristics  of  Southern  Literature.  —  The  one  who 
studies  the  greatest  authors  of  the  South  soon  finds  th^m 
worthy  of  note  for  certain  qualities.  Poe  was  cosmopolitan 
enough  to  appeal  to  foreign  lands  even  more  forcibly  than 
to  America,  and  yet  we  shall  find  that  he  has  won  the 
admiration  of  a  great  part  of  the  world  for  characteristics, 
many  of  which  are  too  essentially  southern  to  be  possessed 
in  the  same  degree  by  authors  in  other  sections  of  the 


SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

country.  The  poets  of  the  South  have  placed  special 
emphasis  on  (i)  melody,  (2)  beauty,  (3)  artistic  workman 
ship.  In  creations  embodying  a  combination  of  such  quali 
ties,  Poe  shows  wonderful  mastery*  More  than  any  other 
American  poet,  he  has  cast  on  the  reader 

"  .  .  .  the  spell  which  no  slumber 

Of  witchery  may  test, 
The  rhythmical  number 
Which  lulFd  him  to  rest." 

After  reading  Poe  and  Lanier,  we  feel  that  we  can  say  to 
the  South  what  Poe  whispered  to  the  fair  Ligeia :  — 

"  No  magic  shall  sever 
Thy  music  from  thee." 

The  wealth  of  sunshine  flooding  the  southern  plains,  the 
luxuriance  of  the  foliage  and  the  flowers,  and  the  strong 
contiasts  of  light  and  shade  and  color  are  often  reflected 
in  the  work  of  southern  writers.  Such  verse  as  this  is 
characteristic :  — 

"  Beyond  the  light  that  would  not  die 
Out  of  the  scarlet-haunted  sky, 
Beyond  the  evening  star's  white  eye 
Of  glittering  chalcedony, 
Drained  out  of  dusk  the  plaintive  cry 

Of  '  whippoorwill ! '   of  whippoorwill  f ' "  l 

In  the  work  of  her  later  writers  of  fiction,  the  South  has 
presented,  often  in  a  realistic  setting  of  natural  scenes,  a. 
romantic  picture  of  the  life  distinctive  of  the  various  sec 
tions,  —  of  the  Creoles  of  Louisiana,  of  the  mountaineers  of 
Tennessee,  of  the  blue  grass  region  of  Kentucky,  of  Vir 
ginia  in  the  golden  days,  and  of  the  Georgia  negro,  whose 
folk  lore  and  philosophy  are  voiced  by  Uncle  Remus. 

1  Cawein,  Red  Leaves  and  Roses* 


EDGAR   ALLAN   POE 


293 


EDGAR  ALLAN    POE,    1809-1849 

Early  Life.  —  The  most  famous  of  all  southern  writers 
and  one  of  the  world's  greatest  literary  artists  happened 
to  be  born  in  Boston  because  his  parents,  who  were  stroll 
ing  actors,  had  come  there  to  fill  an  engagement.  His 
grandfather,  Daniel  Poe,  a  citizen  of  Baltimore,  was  a  gen 
eral  in  the  Revolution.  His  service  to  his  country  was 
sufficiently  noteworthy  to  cause  Lafayette  to  kneel  at  the 
old  general's  grave  and  say,  "  Here  reposes  a  noble 
heart." 


294  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

An  orphan  before  he  was  three  years  old,  Poe  was  reared 
by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  John  Allan  of  Richmond,  Virginia.  In 
1815,  at  the  close  of  the  War  of  1812,  his  foster  parents 
went  to  England  and  took  him  with  them.  He  was  given  a 
school  reader  and  two  spelling  books  with  which  to  amuse 
himself  during  the  long  sailing  voyage  across  the  ocean. 
He  was  placed  for  five  years  in  the  Manor  School  House, 
a  boarding  school,  at  Stoke  Newington,  a  suburb  of  Lon 
don.  Here,  he  could  walk  by  the  very  house  in  which 
Defoe  wrote  Robinson  Crusoe.  But  nothing  could  make 
up  to  Poe  the  loss  of  a  mother  and  home  training  during 
those  five  critical  years.  The  head  master  said  that  Poe 
was  clever,  but  spoiled  by  "an  extravagant  amount  of 
pocket  money."  The  contrast  between  his  school  days 
and  adult  life  should  be  noted.  We  shall  never  hear  of 
his  having  too  much  money  after  he  became  an  author. 

In  1820  the  boy  returned  with  the  Allans  to  Richmond, 
where  he  prepared  for  college,  and  at  the  age  of  seventeen 
entered  the  University  of  Virginia.  "  Here,"  his  biog 
rapher  says,  "  he  divided  his  time,  after  the  custom  of 
undergraduates,  between  the  recitation  room,  the  punch 
bowl,  the  card-table,  athletic  sports,  and  pedestrianism." 
Although  Poe  does  not  seem  to  have  been  censured  by  the 
faculty,  Mr.  Allan  was  displeased  with  his  record,  removed 
him  from  college,  and  placed  him  in  his  counting  house. 
This  act  and  other  causes,  which  have  never  been  fully  as 
certained,  led  Poe  to  leave  Mr.  Allan's  home. 

Poe  then  went  to  Boston,  where,  at  the  age  of  eighteen, 
he  published  a  thin  volume  entitled  Tamerlane  and  Other 
Poems.  Disappointed  at  not  being  able  to  live  by  his  pen, 
he  served  two  years  in  the  army  as  a  common  soldier, 
giving  both  an  assumed  name  and  age.  He  finally  secured 
an  appointment  to  West  Point  after  he  was  slightly  be- 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 


295 


yond  the  legal  age  of  entrance.  The  cadets  said  in  a 
joking  way  that  Poe  had  secured  the  appointment  for  his 
son,  but  that  the  father  substituted  himself  after  the  boy 
died.  Feeling  an  insatiable  ambition  to  become  an  author, 
Poe  neglected  his  duties  at  West  Point,  and  he  was,  fortu 
nately  for  literature,  discharged  at  the  age  of  twenty-two. 

His  Great  Struggle.  —  Soon  after  leaving  West  Point, 
Poe  went  to  his  kindred  in  Baltimore.  In  a  garret  in  that 
southern  city,  he  first  discovered  his  power  in  writing  prose 
tales.  In  1833  his  story,  MS.  Found  in  a  Bottle,  won  a 
prize  of  one  hundred  dollars  offered  by  a  Baltimore  paper. 
In  1834  Mr.  Allan  died  without  mentioning  Poe  in  his 
will;  and  in  spite  of  his  utmost  literary  efforts,  Poe  had  to 
borrow  money  to  keep  from  starving. 

After  struggling  for  four  years  in  Baltimore,  he  went  to 
Richmond  and  became  editor  of  the  Southern  Literary 
Messenger.  He  worked  very  hard  in  this  position,  some 
times  contributing  to  a  single  number  as  much  as  forty 
pages  of  matter,  mostly  editorials  and  criticisms  of  books. 
In  Baltimore  he  had  tested  his  power  of  writing  short 
stories,  but  in  Richmond  his  work  laid  the  foundation  of 
his  reputation  as  a  literary  critic.  While  here,  he  married 
his  cousin,  Virginia  Clemm.  Perhaps  it  was  irregular 
habits  that  caused  him  to  lose  the  profitable  editorship  of 
the  Messenger  soon  after  he  married.  Let  us  remember, 
however,  that  his  mother-in-law  was  charitable  enough  not 
to  unveil  his  weakness.  "  At  home,"  she  said,  "  he  was  as 
simple  and  affectionate  as  a  child." 

The  principal  part  of  the  rest  of  his  life  was  passed  in 
Philadelphia  and  New  York,  where  he  served  as  editor  of 
various  periodicals  and  wrote  stories  and  poems.  In  the 
former  city,  he  wrote  most  of  the  tales  for  which  he  is 
to-day  famous.  With  the  publication  of  his  poem,  The 


-296 


SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 


Raven,  in  New  York  in  1845,  he  reached  the  summit  of 
his  fame.  In  that  year  he  wrote  to  a  friend,  "  The  Raven 
has  had  a  great  'run' — but  I  wrote  it  for  the  express 
purpose  of  running  — just  as  I  did  The  Gold  Bug,  you  know. 
The  bird  beat  the  bug,  though,  all  hollow."  And  yet,  in 
spite  of  his  fame,  he  said  in  the  same  year,  "  I  have  made 
no  money.  I  am  as  poor  now  as  ever  I  was  in  my  life." 


POE'S  COTTAGE,  FORDHAM,  NEW  YORK 

The  truth  was  that  it  would  then 'have  been  difficult  for  the 
most  successful  author  to  live  even  in  the  North  without  a 
salaried  position,  and  conditions  were  worse  in  the  South. 
Like  Hawthorne,  Poe  tried  to  get  a  position  in  a  custom 
house,  but  failed. 

He  moved  to  an  inexpensive  cottage  in  Fordham,  a  short 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 


297 


distance  from  New  York  City,  where  he,  his  wife,  and 
mother-in-law  found  themselves  in  1846  in  absolute  want 
of  food  and  warmth.  The  saddest  scene  in  which  any  great 
American  author  figured  was  wit 
nessed  in  that  cottage  in  "the 
bleak  December,"  when  his  wife, 
Virginia,  lay  dying  in  the  bitter 
cold.  Because  there  was  insuf 
ficient  bed  clothing  to  keep  her 
warm,  Poe  gave  her  his  coat  and 
placed  the  family  cat  upon  her  to 
add  its  warmth. 

Her  death  made  him  almost 
completely  irresponsible.  The 
stunning  effect  of  the  blow  may 
be  seen  in  the  wandering  lines  of 
Ulalume  (1847).  The  end  came  to  him  in  Baltimore  in 
1849,  tne  same  year  in  which  he  wrote  the  beautiful  dirge 
of  Annabel  Lee  for  his  dead  wife.  He*was  only  forty  when 
he  died.  This  greatest  literary  genius  of  the  South  was 
buried  in  Baltimore  in  a  grave  that  remained  unmarked 
for  twenty-six  years. 

In  anticipation  of  his  end,  he  had  written  the  lines  :  — • 

"  And  oh  !  of  all  tortures,  — 

That  torture  the  worst 
Has  abated  —  the  terrible 

Torture  of  thirst 
For  the  napthaline  river 

Of  Passion  accurst :  — 
I  have  drank  of  a  water 

That  quenches  all  thirst." 


VIRGINIA  CLEMM 


His  Tales.  —  He  wrote  more  than  sixty  tales,  some  of 
which  rank  among  the  world's  greatest  short  stories.     The 


298  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

most  important  of  these  productions  may  be  classified  as 
tales  (i)  of  the  supernatural,  like  The  Fall  of  the  House  of 
Usher  and  Ligeia,  (2)  of  conscience,  like  William  Wilson, 
that  remarkable  forerunner  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde, 

(3)  of  pseudo-science,  like  A  Descent  into  the  Maelstrom, 

(4)  of  analysis  or  ratiocination,  like  The  Gold  Bug  and  that 
wonderful  analytical  detective  story,  the  first  of  its  kind, 
The  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue,  the  predecessor  of  later 
detective  stories,  like  The  Adventures  of  Sherlock  Holmes, 
and  (5)  of  natural  beauty,  like  The  Domain  of  Arnheim. 

This  classification  does  not  include  all  of  his  types,  for 
his  powerful  story,  The  Pit  and  the  Pendulum,  does  not 
belong  to  any  of  these  classes.  He  shows  remarkable 
versatility  in  passing  from  one  type  of  story  to  another. 
He  could  turn  from  a  tale  of  the  supernatural  to  write  a 
model  for  future  authors  of  realistic  detective  stories.  He 
could  solve  difficult  riddles  with  masterly  analysis,  and  in 
his  next  story  place  a  conscience-stricken  wretch  on  the 
rack,  and  then  turn  away  calmly  to  write  a  tale  of  natural 
beauty.  He  specially  liked  to  invest  an  impossible  story 
with  scientific  reality,  and  he  employed  Defoe's  specific 
concrete  method  of  mingling  fact  with  fiction.  With  all 
the  seriousness  of  a  teacher  of  physics,  Poe  describes  the 
lunar  trip  of  one  Hans  Pfaall  with  his  balloon,  air-con 
denser,  and  cat.  He  tells  how  the  old  cat  had  difficulty  in 
breathing  at  a  vast  altitude,  while  the  kittens,  born  on  the 
upward  journey,  and  never  used  to  a  dense  atmosphere, 
suffered  little  inconvenience  from  the  rarefaction.  He  re 
lates  in  detail  the  accident  which  led  to  the  detachment 
from  the  balloon  of  the  basket  containing  the  cat  and  kit 
tens,  and  we  find  it  impossible  not  to  be  interested  in  theii 
fate.  He  had  the  skill  of  a  wizard  in  presenting  in  re 
markably  brief  compass  suggestion  after  suggestion  to  in- 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 


299 


vest  his  tales  with  the  proper  atmosphere  and  to  hypnotize 
the  reader  into  an  unresisting  acceptance  of  the  march  of 
events.  Even  a  hostile  critic  calls  him  "  a  conjuror  who 
does  not  need  to  have  the  lights  turned  down." 

In  one  respect  his  tales  are  alike,  for  they  are  all  ro 
mantic  (p.  88)  and  deal  with  the  unusual,  the  terrible,  or 
the  supernatural.  Some  of  these  materials  suggest  Charles 
Brockden  Brown  (p.  89),  but  Poe,  working  with  the  genius 
of  a  master  artist,  easily  surpassed  him. 

His  Development  of  the  Modern  Short  Story.  —  Poe  has 
an  almost  world-wide  reputation  for  the  part  which  he 
played  in  developing  the  modern  short  story.  The  ancient 
Greeks  had  short  stories,  and  Irving  had  written  delightful 
ones  while  Poe  was  still  a  child ;  but  Poe  gave  this  type  of 
literature  its  modern  form.  He  banished  the  little  essays, 
the  moralizing,  and  the  philosophizing,  which  his  predeces 
sors,  and  even  his  great  contemporary,  Hawthorne,  had 
scattered  through  their  short  stories.  Poe's  aim  in  writing 
a  short  story  was  to  secure  by  the  shortest  air-line  passage 
the  precise  effect  which  he  desired.  He  was  a  great  lit 
erary  critic,  and  his  essays,  The  Philosophy  of  Composition 
and  The  Poetic  Principle,  with  all  their  aberrations,  have 
become  classic;  but  his  most  famous  piece  of  criticism  — 
almost  epoch-making,  so  far  as  the  short  story  is  concerned 
—  is  the  following  :  — 

"  A  skillful  literary  artist  has  constructed  a  tale.  If  wise,  he  has  not 
fashioned  his  thoughts  to  accommodate  his  incidents  ;  but  having  con 
ceived,  with  deliberate  care,  a  certain  unique  or  single  effect  to  be 
wrought  out,  he  then  invents  such  incidents,  —  he  then  combines  such 
events  as  may  best  aid  him  in  establishing  this  preconceived  effect.  If 
his  very  initial  sentence  tend  not  to  the  outbringing  of  this  effect,  then 
he  has  failed  in  his  first  step.  In  the  whole  composition  there  should 
be  no  word  written,  of  which  the  tendency,  direct  or  indirect,  is  not  to 
the  one  preestablished  design." 


^00  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

Poe's  greatest  supernatural  tale,  The  Fall  of  the  House  of 
Usher,  should  be  read  in  connection  with  this  criticism.  His 
initial  sentence  thus  indicates  the  atmosphere  of  the  story : — • 

"  During  the  whole  of  a  dull,  dark,  and  soundless  day  in  the  autumn 
of  the  year,  when  the  clouds  hung  oppressively  low  in  the  heavens,  I 
had  been  passing  alone,  on  horseback,  through  a  singularly  dreary  tract 
of  country ;  and  at  length  found  myself,  as  the  shades  of  the  evening 
drew  on,  within  view  of  the  melancholy  House  of  Usher." 

Each  following  stroke  of  the  master's  brush  adds  to  the 
desired  effect.  The  black  and  lurid  tarn,  Roderick  Usher 
with  his  mental  disorder,  his  sister  Madeline,  subject  to 
trances,  buried  prematurely  in  a  vault  directly  underneath 
the  guest's  room,  the  midnight  winds  blowing  from  every 
direction  toward  the  House  of  Usher,  the  chance  reading 
of  a  sentence  from  an  old  and  musty  volume,  telling  of  a 
mysterious  noise,  the  hearing  of  a  muffled  sound  and  the 
terrible  suggestion  of  its  cause,  —  all  tend  to  indicate  and 
heighten  the  gloom  of  the  final  catastrophe. 

In  one  of  his  great  stories,  which  is  not  supernatural, 
The  Pit  and  the  Pendulum*  he  desires  to  impress  the 
reader  with  the  horrors  of  medieval  punishment.  We 
may  wonder  why  the  underground  dungeon  is  so  large, 
why  the  ceiling  is  thirty  feet  high,  why  a  pendulum  ap 
pears  from  an  opening  in  that  ceiling.  But  we  know 
when  the  dim  light,  purposely  admitted  from  above,  dis 
closes  the  prisoner  strapped  immovably  on  his  back,  and 
reveals  the  giant  pendulum,  edged  with  the  sharpest  steel, 
slowly  descending,  its  arc  of  vibration  increasing  as  the 
terrible  edge  almost  imperceptibly  approaches  the  prisoner. 
We  find  ourselves  bound  with  him,  suffering  from  the  slow 
torture.  We  would  escape  into  the  upper  air  if  we  could, 
but  Poe's  hypnotic  power  holds  us  as  helpless  as  a  child 
while  that  terrible  edge  descends. 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 


3OI 


A  comparison  of  these  stories  and  the  most  successful 
ones  published  since  Poe's  time,  on  the  one  hand,  with  those 
written  by  Irving  or  Hawthorne,  on  the  other,  will  show 
the  influence  of  Poe's  technique  in  making  almost  a  new 
creation  of  the  modern  short  story. 

Poetry.  —  Poe  wrote  a  comparatively  small  amount  of 
verse.  Of  the  forty-eight  poems  which  he  is  known  to 

have  written,  not 
more  than  nine  are 
masterpieces,  and 
all  of  these  are  short. 
It  was  a  favorite  ar 
ticle  of  his  poetic 
creed  that  there 
could  be  no  such 
creation  as  a  long 
poem,  that  such  a 
poem  would  in 

reality  be  a  SCriCS  of 

poems.    He  thought 


HOUSE  WHERE  POE  WROTE  "THE  RAVEN" 
(Near  Eighty-fourth  Street,  New  York) 


that  each  poem  should  cause  only  one  definite 
emotional  impression,  and  that  a  long  poem 
would  lack  the  necessary  unity.  He  says  that 

he  determined  in  advance  that  The  Raven  should  contain 

about  one  hundred  lines. 

His  poetic  aim  was  solely  "the creation  of  beauty."     He 

says :  — 

"  Regarding,  then,  Beauty  as  my  province,  my  next  question  referred 
to  the  tone  of  its  highest  manifestation ;  and  all  experience  has  shown 
that  this  tone  is  one  of  sadness.  Beauty  of  whatever  kind,  in  its  supreme 
development,  invariably  excites  the  sensitive  soul  to  tears.  Melancholy 
is  thus  the  most  legitimate  of  all  the  poetical  tones."1 


1  The  Philosophy  of  Composition. 


302  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

He  then  concludes  that  death  is  the  most  melancholy  sub 
ject  available  for  a  poet,  and  that  the  death  of  a  beautiful 
woman  "is  unquestionably  the  most  poetical  topic  in  the 
world."  From  the  popularity  of  The  Raven  at  home  and 
abroad,  in  comparison  with  other  American  poems,  it 
would  seem  as  if  the  many  agreed  with  Poe  and  felt  the 
fascination  of  the  burden  of  his  song :  — 

"  Tell  this  soul  with  sorrow  laden  if,  within  the  distant  Aidenn, 
It  shall  clasp  a  sainted  maiden  whom  the  angels  name  Lenore  — 
Clasp  a  rare  and  radiant  maiden  whom  the  angels  name  Lenore." 


jf 

if 


ftf"    </ 

8 


FACSIMILE  OF  ^IRST  STANZA  OF  ANNABEL  LEE 

His  most  beautiful  poem,  Annabel  Lee,  is  the  dirge  written 
for  his  wife,  and  it  is  the  one  great  poem  in  which  he 
sounds  this  note  of  lasting  triumph  :  — 

"  And  neither  the.  angels  in  heaven  above, 

Nor  the  demons  down  under  the  sea, 
Can  ever  dissever  my  soul  from  the  soul 
Of  the  beautiful  ANNABEL  LEE." 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 


3°3 


A  few  of  his  great  poems,  like  Israfel  and  The  Bells,  do 
not  sing  of  death,  but  most  of  them  make  us  feel  the 
presence  of  the  great  Shadow.  The  following  lines  show 
that  it  would  be  wrong  to  say,  as  some  do,  that  his  thoughts 
never  pass  beyond  it :  — 

"  And  all  my  days  are  trances, 

And  all  my  nightly  dreams 
Are  where  thy  dark  eye  glances, 

And  where  thy  footstep  gleams  — 
In  what  ethereal  dances, 

By  what  eternal  streams."  * 

It  would  be  difficult  to  name  a  poet  of  any  race  or  age 
who  has  surpassed  Poe  in  exquisite  melody.  His  liquid 
notes  soften  the  harshness  of  death.  No  matter  what  his 
theme,  his  verse  has  something  of  the  quality  which  he 
ascribes  to  the  fair  Ligeia  :  — 

"Ligeia!     Ligeia! 

My  beautiful  one ! 
Whose  harshest  idea 

Will  to  melody  run."      -, 

The  fascination  of  his  verse  is  not  due  to  the  depth  of 
thought,  to  the  spiritual  penetration  of  his  imagination,  or 
to  the  poetic  setting  of  noble  ideals,  for  he  lacked  these 
qualities;  but  he  was  a  master  in  securing  emotional  effects 
with  his  sad  music.  He  wedded  his  songs  of  the  death  of 
beautiful  women  to  the  most  wonderful  melodies,  which  at 
times  almost  transcend  the  limits  of  language  and  pass  into 
the  realm  of  pure  music.  His  verses  are  not  all-sufficient 
for  the  hunger  of  the  soul;  but  they  supply  an  element  in 
which  Puritan  literature  was  too  often  lacking,  and  they 
justify  the  transcendental  doctrine  that  beauty  is  its  own 
excuse  for  being. 

1  To  One  in  Paradise. 


304  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

General  Characteristics.  —  Poe  was  a  great  literary  artist, 
who  thought  that  the  creation  of  beauty  was  the  object  of 
every  form  of  the  highest  art.  His  aim  in  both  prose 
and  poetry  was  to  produce  a  pronounced  effect  by  artistic 
means.  His  continued  wide  circulation  shows  that  he  was 
successful  in  his  aim.  An  English  publisher  recently  said 
that  he  sold  in  one  year  29,000  of  Poe's  tales,  or  about 
three  times  as  many  of  them  as  of  any  other  American's 
work. 

The  success  with  which  Poe  met  in  producing  an  effect 
upon  the  minds  of  his  readers  makes  him  worthy  of  care 
ful  study  by  all  writers  and  speakers,  who  desire  to  make 
a  vivid  impression.  Poe  selected  with  great  care  the 
point  which  he  wished  to  emphasize.  He  then  dis 
carded  everything  which  did  not  serve  to  draw  attention 
to  that  point.  On  his  stage  the  colored  lights  may  come 
from  many  different  directions,  but  they  all  focus  on  one 
object. 

Hawthorne  and  Poe,  two  of  the  world's  great  short-story 
writers,  were  remarkably  unlike  in  their  aims.  Hawthorne 
saw  everything  in  the  light  of  moral  consequences.  Poe 
cared  nothing  for  moral  issues,  except  in  so  far  as  the 
immoral  was  ugly.  Hawthorne  appreciated  beauty  only 
as  a  true  revelation  of  the  inner  life.  Poe  loved  beauty 
and  the  melody  of  sound  for  their  own  attractiveness. 
His  effects,  unlike  Hawthorne's,  were  more  physical  than 
moral.  Poe  exalted  the  merely  technical  and  formal  side 
of  literary  excellence  more  than  Hawthorne. 

Poe's  prose  style  is  direct,  energetic,  clear,  and  adequate 
to  the  occasion.  His  mind  was  too  analytic  to  overload 
his  sentences  with  ornament,  and  too  definite  to  be  obscure. 
He  had  the  same  aim  in  his  style  as  in  his  subject  matter, — 
to  secure  an  effect  with  the  least  obstruction. 


EDGAR   ALLAN  POE  305 

His  poetry  is  of  narrower  range  than  his  prose,  but  his 
greatest  poems  hold  a  unique  position  for  an  unusual  com 
bination  of  beauty,  melody,  and  sadness.  He  retouched 
and  polished  them  from  year  to  year,  until  they  stand  un 
surpassed  in  their  restricted  field. 
He  received  only  ten  dollars  for  The 
Raven  while  he  was  alive,  but  the  ap 
preciation  of  his  verse  has  increased 
to  such  an  extent  that  the  sum  of  two 
thousand  dollars  was  recently  paid  for  a 
copy  of  the  thin  little  1827  edition 
of  his  poems. 

It   has  been    humorously 
said  that  the  French  pray  to 
Poe    as    a    literary    saint. 
They  have  never  ceased  to 
wonder  at  the  unusual  com 
bination  of  his  analytic  rea 
soning      power      with      his 

genius  for  imaginative  pres-  Busy  op  po£  (N  UNIVERS1TY  OF  V1RQ1N1, 
entation  of  romantic  ma 
terials,  —  at  the  realism  of  his  touch  and  the  romanticism 
of  his  thought.  It  is  true  that  many  foreign  critics  consider 
Poe  America's  greatest  author.  An  eminent  English  critic 
says  that  Poe  has  surpassed  all  the  rest  of  our  writers  in 
playing  the  part  of  the  Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin  to  other 
authors.  At  home,  however,  there  have  been  repeated 
attempts  to  disbar  Poe  from  the  court  of  great  writers. 
Not  until  1910  did  the  board  of  electors  vote  him  a  tablet 
in  the  Hall  of  Fame  for  Great  Americans. 

It  may  be  admitted  that  Poe  was  a  technical  artist,  that 
his  main  object  was  effectiveness  of  impression  and  beauty 
of  form,  that  he  was  not  overanxious  about  the  worth 


306  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

of  his  subject  matter  to  an  aspiring  soul,  and  that  he  would 
have  been  vastly  greater  if  he  had  joined  high  moral  aim  to 
his  quest  of  beauty.  He  overemphasized  the  romantic 
elements  of  strangeness,  sadness,  and  horror.  He  was  de 
ficient  in  humor,  and  sentiment,  and  his  guiding  standards 
of  criticism  often  seem  too  coldly  intellectual.  Those 
critics  who  test  him  exclusively  by  the  old  Puritan  standards 
invariably  find  him  wanting,  for  the  Puritans  had  no  room 
in  their  world  for  the  merely  beautiful. 

Poe's  genius,  however,  was  sufficiently  remarkable  to 
triumph  over  these  defects,  which  would  have  consigned  to 
oblivion  other  writers  of  less  power.  In  spite  of  the  most 
determined  hostile  criticism  that  an  American  author  has 
ever  known,  the  editions  of  Poe's  works  continue  to  in 
crease.  The  circle  of  those  who  fall  under  his  hypnotic 
charm,  in  which  there  is  nothing  base  or  unclean,  is  en 
larged  with  the  passing  of  the  years.  As  a  great  literary 
craftsman,  he  continues  to  teach  others.  He  is  now  not 
likely  to  be  dislodged  from  that  peculiar,  narrow  field 
where  he  holds  a  unique  and  original  position  among  the 
great  writers  of  the  world. 


WILLIAM  GILMORE  SIMMS,  1806-1870 

William  Gilmore  Simms,  often  styled  the  "  Cooper  of  the 
South,"  was  born  of  poor  parents  in  Charleston,  South 
Carolina,  in  1806.  His  mother  died  when  he  was  very 
young,  and  his  father  moved  west  into  the  wilds  of  Missis 
sippi.  The  boy  was  left  behind  to  be  reared  by  his  grand 
mother,  a  poor  but  clever  woman,  who  related  to  him 
tales  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  through  which  she  had 
lived.  During  a  visit  to  his  father,  these  tales  were  sup 
plemented  by  stories  of  contemporary  life  on  the  borders 


WILLIAM    GILMORE   SIMMS 


307 


of  civilization.     In  this  way  Simms  acquired  a  large  part 
of  the  material  for  his  romances. 

He  prospered  financially,  married  well,  became  the  owner 
of  a  fine  estate,  and  bent  every  effort  to  further  southern 
literature  and  assist  southern  writers.  He  became  the 
center  of  a  group  of  literary  men  in  Charleston,  of  whom 
Hayne  and  Timrod  were  the 
most  famous.  The  war,  how 
ever,  ruined  Simms.  His 
property  and  library  were  de 
stroyed,  and,  though  he  con 
tinued  to  write,  he  never 
found  his  place  in  the  new 
order  of  life.  He  failed  to 
catch  the  public  ear  of  a 
people  satiated  with  fighting 
and  hair-raising  adventures. 
He  survived  but  six  years, 
and  died  in  Charleston  in 
1870. 

'  WILLIAM   GILMORE   SIMMS 

Being   of    humble    birth, 

Simms  lacked  the  advantage  of  proper  schooling.  Al 
though  he  was  surrounded  by  aristocratic  and  exclusive 
society,  he  did  not  have  the  association  of  a  literary  center, 
such  as  the  Concord  and  Cambridge  writers  enjoyed.  He 
found  no  publishers  nearer  than  New  York,  to  which  city 
he  personally  had  to  carry  his  manuscripts  for  publication. 
Yet  with  all  these  handicaps,  he  achieved  fame  for  himself 
and  his  loved  Southland.  This  victory  over  adverse  con 
ditions  was  won  by  sheer  force  of  indomitable  will,  by  tre 
mendous  activity,  and  by  a  great,  honest,  generous  nature. 

His  writings  show  an  abounding  energy  and  versatility. 
He  wrote  poetry,  prose  fiction,  historical  essays,  and  politi- 


308  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

cal  pamphlets,  and  amazed  his  publishers  by  his  speed  in 
composition.  His  best  work  is  The  Yemassee  (1835),  a 
story  of  the  uprising  of  the  Indians  in  Carolina.  The 
midnight  massacre,  the  fight  at  the  blockhouse,  and  the 
blood-curdling  description  of  the  dishonoring  of  the  Indian 
chief's  son  are  told  with  infectious  vigor  and  rapidity. 
The  Partisan  (1835),  Katherine  Walton  (1851),  and  The 
Sword  and  Distaff  (1852),  afterwards  called  Woodcraft, 
also  show  his  ability  to  tell  exciting  tales,  to  understand 
Indian  character,  and  to  commemorate  historical  events  in 
thrilling  narratives. 

Simms  wrote  rapidly  and  carelessly.  He  makes  mis 
takes  in  grammar  and  construction,  and  is  often  stilted  and 
grandiloquent.  All  of  his  romances  are  stories  of  adven 
ture  which  are  en  joyed  by  boys,  but  not  much  read  by  others. 
Nevertheless,  his  best  works  fill  a  large  place  in  southern 
literature  and  history.  They  tell  in  an  interesting  way  the 
life  of  the  border  states,  of  southern  crossroads  towns,  of 
colonial  wars,  and  of  Indian  customs.  What  Cooper  did 
for  the  North,  Simms  accomplished  for  the  South.  He 
lacked  Cooper's  skill  and  variety  of  invention,  and  he 
created  no  character  to  compare  with  Cooper's  Leather- 
stocking;  but  he  excelled  Cooper  in  the  more  realistic 
portrayal  of  Indian  character. 

HENRY   TIMROD,   1829-1867 

Henry  Timrod  was  born  in  Charleston,  South  Caro 
lina,  in  1829.  He  attended  the  University  of  Georgia; 
but  was  prevented  by  delicate  health  and  poverty  from 
taking  his  degree.  He  was  early  thrown  upon  his  own  re 
sources  to  earn  a  livelihood,  and  having  tried  law  and 
found  it  distasteful,  he  depended  upon  teaching  and  writ 


HENRY  TIMROD 


309 


ing.  His  verses  were  well  received,  but  the  times  pre 
ceding  the  Civil  War  were  not  propitious  for  a  poor  poet. 
As  he  was  not  strong  enough  to  bear  arms  at  the  outbreak 
of  hostilities,  he  went  to  the  field  as  a  war  correspondent 
for  a  newspaper  in  Charles 
ton  and  he  became  later  an 
associate  editor  in  Colum 
bia.  His  printing  office  was 
demolished  in  Sherman's 
march  to  the  sea,  and  at  the 
close  of  the  war  Timrod  was 
left  in  a  desperate  condition. 
He  was  hopelessly  ill  from 
consumption  ;  he  was  in  the 
direst  poverty;  and  he  was 
saddened  by  the  death  of  his 
son.  There  was  no  relief  for 
Timrod  until  death  released 
him  from  his  misery  in  1867. 
Yet  in  spite  of  all  his  trials,  he  desired  earnestly  to  live, 
and  'when  his  sister  told  him  that  death  would,  at  least, 
bring  him  rest,  he  replied,  "Yes,  my  sister,  but  love  is 
sweeter  than  rest." 

Timrod's  one  small  volume  of  poetry  contains  some  of 
the  most  spontaneous  nature  and  love  lyrics  in  the  South. 
In  this  stanza  to  Spring,  the  directness  and  simplicity  of 
his  manner  may  be  seen :  — 

u  In  the  deep  heart  of  every  forest  tree 
The  blood  is  all  aglee, 

And  there's  a  look  about  the  leafless  bowers 
As  if  they  dreamed  of  flowers.'' 


HENRY  TIMROD 


He  says  in  A  Vision  of  Poesy  that  the  poet's  mission  is  to 


310  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

"  .  .  .  turn  life's  tasteless  waters  into  wine, 
And  flush  them  through  and  through  with  purple  tints." 

His  best  known  and  most  original  poem  is  The  Cotton  BolL 
This  description  of  the  wide  stretches  of  a  white  cotton 
field  is  one  of  the  best  in  the  poem.  He  shows  the  field 

"...  lost  afar 

Behind  the  crimson  hills  and  purple  lawns 
Of  sunset,  among  plains  which  roll  their  streams 
Against  the  Evening  Star  ! 
And  lo  ! 

To  the  remotest  point  of  sight, 
Although  I  gaze  upon  no  waste  of  snow, 
The  endless  field  is  white ; 
And  the  whole  landscape  glows, 
For  many  a  shining  league  away, 
With  such  accumulated  light 
As  Polar  lands  would  flash  beneath  a  tropic  day !  * 

Simplicity  and  sincerity  in  language,  theme,  and  feeling 
are  special  characteristics  of  Timrod's  verse.  His  lyrics 
are  short  and  their  volume  slight,  but  a  few  of  them,  like 
Spring  and  The  Lily  Confidante,  seem  almost  to  have  sung 
themselves.  So  vivid  is  his  reproduction  of  the  spirit  of 
the  awakening  year  in  his  poem  Spring,  that,  to  quote  his 
own  lines :  — 

"...  you  scarce  would  start, 
If  from  a  beech's  heart, 

A  blue-eyed  Dryad,  stepping  forth,  should  say, 
<  Behold  me  !  I  am  May.'" 

Timrod  shows  the  same  qualities  of  simplicity,  direct 
ness,  and  genuine  feeling  in  his  war  poetry.  No  more 
ringing  lines  were  written  for  the  southern  cause  during 
the  Civil  War  than  are  to  be  found  in  his  poems,  Carolina 
and  Ethnogenesis. 


PAUL  HAMILTON  HAYNE  311 

PAUL  HAMILTON   HAYNE,   1830-1886 

Paul  Hamilton  Hayne  was  born  in  Charleston,  South 
Carolina,  in  1830.  His  family  was  rich  and  influential, 
and  he  inherited  a  fortune  in  his  own  right.  After  gradu 
ating  at  Charleston  College,  he  studied  law,  but  devoted 
his  independent  leisure  entirely  to  literature.  He  became 
associated  with  The  Southern  Literary  Gazette,  and  was 
the  first  editor  of  Russell's  Magazine,  an  ambitious  venture 
launched  by  the  literary  circle  at  the  house  of  Simms. 
Hayne  married  happily,  and  had 
every  prospect  of  a  prosperous 
and  brilliant  career  when  the  war 
broke  out.  He  enlisted,  but  his 
health  soon  failed,  and  at  the 
close  of  the  war  he  found  himself 
an  invalid  with  his  fortune  de 
stroyed.  He  went  to  the  Pine 
Barrens  of  Georgia,  where  he 
built,  on  land  which  he  named 
Copse  Hill,  a  hut  nearly  as 
rude  as  Thoreau's  at  Walden. 
Handicapped  by  poverty  and  PAUL  HAMILTON  HAYNE 

disease,  Hayne  lived  here  during  the  remainder  of  his  life, 
writing  his  best  poems  on  a  desk  fashioned  out  of  a  work 
bench.  He  died  in  1886. 

Hayne  wrote  a  large  amount  of  poetry,  and  tried  many 
forms  of  verse,  in  almost  all  of  which  he  maintained  a 
smoothness  of  meter,  a  correctness  of  rhyme,  and,  in  gen 
eral,  a  high  level  of  artistic  finish.  He  is  a  skilled  crafts 
man,  his  ear  is  finely  attuned  to  harmonious  arrangements  of 
sounds,  and  he  shows  an  acquaintance  with  the  best  melo 
dists  in  English  poetry.  The  limpid  ease  and  grace  in  his 
lines  may  be  judged  by  this  dainty  poem  :  — 


312  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

"  A  tiny  rift  within  the  lute 
May  sometimes  make  the  music  mute! 
By  slow  degrees,  the  rift  grows  wide, 
By  slow  degrees,  the  tender  tide  — 
Harmonious  once  —  of  loving  thought 
Becomes  with  harsher  measures  fraught, 
Until  the  heart's  Arcadian  breath 
Lapses  thro'  discord  into  death !  " 

His  best  poems  are  nature  lyrics.  In  The  Woodland 
Phases,  one  of  the  finest  of  these,  he  tells  how  nature  is 
to  him  a  revelation  of  the  divine  :  — 

"  And  midway,  betwixt  heaven  and  us, 

Stands  Nature  in  her  fadeless  grace, 
Still  pointing  to  our  Father's  house, 
His  glory  on  her  mystic  face/' 

Hayne  found  the  inspiration  for  his  verse  in  the  scenes 
about  his  forest  home :  in  the  "  fairy  South  Wind "  that 
"  floateth  on  the  subtle  wings  of  balm,"  in 
"...  the  one  small  glimmering  rill 
That  twinkles  like  a  wood-fay's  mirthful  eye," 

in  the  solitary  lake 

"  Shrined  in  the  woodland's  secret  heart," 

in 

"  His  blasted  pines,  smit  by  the  fiery  West, 

Uptowering  rank  on  rank,  like  Titan  spears," 

in  the  storm  among  the  Georgian  hills,  in  the  twilight,  that 

"...  on  her  virginal  throat 
Wears  for  a  gem  the  tremulous  vesper  star," 

and  in  the  mocking-birds,  whose 

"...  love  notes  fill  the  enchanted  land ; 
Through  leaf-wrought  bars  they  storm  the  stars, 
These  love  songs  of  the  mocking-birds  !  " 

The  chief  characteristics  of  his  finest  poetry  are  a  tender 
love  of  nature,  a  profusion  of  figurative  language,  and  a 
gentle  air  of  meditation. 


SIDNEY  LANIER 


313 


SIDNEY  LANIER,  1842-1881 

Life.  —  Sidney  Lanier  was  the  product  of  a  long  line  of 
cultured  ancestors,  among  whom  appeared,  both  in  England 
and  America,  men  of  striking  musical  and  artistic  ability. 
He  was  born  in  Macon,  Georgia,  in  1842.  He  served  in 
the  Confederate  army  during  the  four  years  of  the  war, 
and  was  taken  prisoner  and  exposed  to  the  hardest  condi 
tions,  both  during  his  confinement  and  after  his  release. 
The  remainder  of  his  life  was  a  losing  fight  against  the 
ravages  of  consumption. 


314  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

He  was  fairly  successful  for  a  short  time  in  his  father's 
law  office;  but  if  ever  a  man  believed  that  it  was  his  duty 
to  devote  his  every  breath  to  the  gift  of  music  and  poetry 
bestowed  upon  him,  that  man  was  Lanier.  His  wife 
agreed  with  him  in  his  ideals  and  faith,  so  in  1873  he  left 
his  family  in  Georgia  and  went  to  Baltimore,  the  land  of 
libraries  and  orchestras.  He  secured  the  position  of  first 
flute  in  the  Peabody  orchestra,  and,  by  sheer  force  of 
genius,  took  up  the  most  difficult  scores  and  faultlessly  led 
all  the  flutes.  He  read  and  studied,  wrote  and  lectured 
like  one  who  had  suffered  from  mental  starvation.  In 
1879  he  received  the  appointment  of  lecturer  on  English 
literature  at  the  Johns  Hopkins  University,  a  position 
which  his  friends  had  long  wished  to  see  him  fill.  He 
held  it  only  two  years,  however,  before  his  death.  His 
health  had  fast  been  failing.  He  wrote  part  of  the  time 
while  lying  on  his  back,  and,  because  of  physical  weak 
ness,  he  delivered  some  of  his  lectures  in  whispers.  In 
search  of  relief,  he  was  taken  to  Florida,  Texas,  and 
North  Carolina,  but  no  permanent  benefit  came,  and  he 
died  in  his  temporary  quarters  in  North  Carolina  in  1881. 

Works. —  Lanier  wrote  both  prose  and  poetry.  His 
prose  comprises  books  for  children  and  critical  studies. 
The  Science  of  English  Verse  (1880)  and  The  English  Novel 
(1883)  are  of  interest  because  of  their  clear  setting  forth  of 
his  theory  of  versification  and  art.  In  his  poetry  he  strives 
to  embody  the  ideals  proclaimed  in  his  prose  work,  which 
are,  first,  to  write  nothing  that  is  not  moral  and  elevating  in 
tone,  and,  second,  to  express  himself  in  versification  which 
is  obedient  to  the  laws  of  regular  musical  composition,  in 
rhyme,  rhythm,  vowel  assonance,  alliteration,  and  phrasings. 

Lanier's  creed,  that  the  poet  should  be  an  inspiration 
for  good  to  his  readers,  is  found  in  his  lines :  — 


SIDNEY  LANIER 

«  The  artist's  market  is  the  heart  of  man, 
The  artist's  price  some  little  good  of  man." 

The  great  inspiration  of  his  life  was  love,  and  he  ha* 
some  fine  love  poems,  such  as  My  Springs,  In  Absence^ 
Evening  Song,  and  Laus  Mariae.  In  The  Symphony,  which 
voices  the  social  sorrow  for  the  overworked  and  down 
trodden,  he  says  the  problem  is  not  one  for  the  head  but 

the  heart :  — 

"  Vainly  might  Plato's  brain  revolve  it, 
Plainly  the  heart  of  a  child  could  solve  it.w 

In  ending  the  poem,  he  says  that  even 

"  Music  is  Love  in  search  of  a  word." 

Strong  personal  love,  tender  pitying  love  for  humanity,  im 
passioned  love  of  nature,  and  a  reverent  love  of  God  are 
found  in  Lanier. 

The  striking  musical  quality  of    Lanier's  best  verse  is 
seen  in  these  stanzas  from  Tampa  Robins  :  — 

"  The  robin  laughed  in  the  orange-tree : 
*  Ho,  windy  North,  a  fig  for  thee : 
While  breasts  are  red  and  wings  are  bold 
And  green  trees  wave  us  globes  of  gold, 
Time's  scythe  shall  reap  but  bliss  for  me 
—  Sunlight,  song,  and  the  orange-tree. 

" « I'll  south  with  the  sun  and  keep  my  clime ; 
My  wing  is  king  of  the  summer-time ; 
My  breast  to  the  sun  his  torch  shall  hold ; 
And  I'll  call  down  through  the  green  and  gold, 
Time,  take  thy  scythe,  reap  bliss  for  me, 
Bestir  thee  under  the  orange-tree?  " 

The  music  of  the  bird,  the  sparkle  of  the  sunlight,  and  the 
pure  joy  of  living  are  in  this  poem,  which  is  one  of  Lanier's 
finest  lyrical  outbursts.  The  Song  of  the  Chattahoochee  is 
another  of  his  great  successes  in  pure  melody.  The 


3i6  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

rhymes,  the  rhythm,  the  alliteration  beautifully  express  the 
flowing  of  the  river. 

His  noblest  and  most  characteristic  poem,  however,  is 
The  Marshes  of  Glynn.  It  seems  to  breathe  the  very  spirit 
of  the  broad  open  marshes  and  to  interpret  their  meaning 
to  the  heart  of  man,  while  the  long,  sweeping,  melodious 
lines  of  the  verse  convey  a  rich  volume  of  music,  of  which 
he  was  at  times  a  wonderful  master. 

"  Oh,  what  is  abroad  in  the  marsh  and  the  terminal  sea? 
Somehow  my  soul  seems  suddenly  free 
From  the  weighing  of  fate  and  the  sad  discussion  of  sin, 
By  the  length  and  the  breadth  and  the  sweep  of  the  marshes  of 
Glynn." 

This  poem,  original  and  beautiful,  both  in  subject  and  form, 
expresses  Lanier's  strong  faith  in  God.    He  says:  — 

"  As  the  marsh-hen  secretly  builds  on  the  watery  sod, 
Behold,  I  will  build  me  a  nest  on  the  greatness  of  God : 
I  will  fly  in  the  greatness  of  God  as  the  marsh-hen  flies 
In  the  freedom  that  fills  all  the  space  'twixt  the  marsh  and  the 

skies : 

By  so  many  roots  as  the  marsh-grass  sends  in  the  sod 
I  will  heartily  lay  me  a-hold  of  the  greatness  of  God." 

No  Puritan  could  show  a  truer  faith  than  Lanier's,  nor  a 
faith  more  poetically  and  devoutly  expressed.  In  his  Sttn- 
rise  he  attains  at  times  the  beauty  of  The  Marshes  of  Glynn, 
and  voices  in  some  of  the  lines  a  veritable  rhapsody  of 
faith.  Yet  for  sustained  elevation  of  feeling  and  for 
unbroken  musical  harmonies,  Sunrise  cannot  equal  The 
Marshes  of  Glynn,  which  alone  would  suffice  to  keep 
Lanier's  name  on  the  scroll  of  the  greater  American  poets. 
General  Characteristics.  —  Lanier  is  an  ambitious  poet. 
He  attempts  to  voice  the  unutterable,  to  feel  the  intangible, 
to  describe  the  indescribable,  and  to  clothe  this  ecstasy  in 


FATHER  RYAN 


317 


language  that  will  be  a  harmonious  accompaniment  to  the 
thought.  This  striving  after  practically  impossible  effects 
sometimes  gives  the  feeling  of  artificiality  and  strain  to  his 
verse.  It  is  not  always  simple,  and  sometimes  one  over 
charged  stanza  will  mar  an  otherwise  exquisite  poem. 

On  the  other  hand,  Lanier  never  gives  voice  to  anything 
that  is  merely  trivial  or  pretty.  He  is  always  in  earnest, 
and  the  feeling  most  often  aroused  by  him  is  a  passionate 
exaltation.  He  is  a  nature  poet.  The  color,  the  sun 
shine,  the  cornfields,  the  hills,  and  the  marshes  of  the  South 
are  found  in  his  work.  But  more  than  their  outer  aspect, 
he  likes  to  interpret  their  spirit,  —  the  peace  of  the  marsh, 
the  joy  of  the  bird,  the  mystery  of  the  forest,  and  the 
evidences  of  love  everywhere. 

The  music  of  his  lines  varies  with  his  subjects.  It  is 
light  and  delicate  in  Tampa  Robins,  rippling  and  gurgling 
in  The  Song  of  the  Chat takoochee^ 
and  deeply  sonorous  in  The 
Marshes  of  Glynn.  Few  surpass 
him  in  the  long,  swinging,  grave 
harmonies  of  his  most  highly  in 
spired  verse.  In  individual  lines, 
in  selected  stanzas,  Lanier  has 
few  rivals  in  America.  His  poet 
ical  endowment  was  rich,  his  pas 
sion  for  music  was  a  rare  gift,  his 
love  of  beauty  was  intense,  and 
his  soul  was  on  fire  with  ideals. 

FATHER  RYAN,   1839-1886 

Another  poet  who  will  long 
be  remembered  for  at  least  one 
poem  is  Abram  Joseph  Ryan  (1839- 1886),  better  known  as 


FATHER    RYAN 


SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 


"Father  Ryan."  He  was  a  Roman  Catholic  priest  who 
served  as  chaplain  in  the  Confederate  army,  and  though 
longing  and  waiting  only  for  death  in  order  to  go  to  the 
land  that  held  joy  for  him,  he  wrote  and  worked  for  his 
fellow-man  with  a  gentleness  and  sympathy  that  left  regret 
in  many  hearts  when  he  died  in  Louisville,  Kentucky,  in 
1886. 

He  loved  the  South  and  pitied  her  plight,  and  in  his 
pathetic  poem,  The  Conquered  Banner,  voiced  the  woe  of 
a  heart-broken  people :  — 

"Furl  that  Banner,  softly,  slowly! 
Treat  it  gently  —  it  is  holy  — 

For  it  droops  above  the  dead. 
Touch  it  not  —  unfold  it  never — 
Let  it  droop  there,  furled  forever, 

For  its  people's  hopes  are  dead." 


JOHN    BANNISTER  TABB,   1845-1909 

John  Bannister  Tabb  was  born  in 
1845  on  the  family  estate  in  Amelia 
County,  Virginia.  He  was  a  strong 
adherent  of  the  southern  cause,  and 
during  the  war  he  served  as  clerk  on 
one  of  the  boats  carrying  military 
stores.  He  was  taken  prisoner,  and 
placed  in  Point  Lookout  Prison, 
where  Lanier  also  was  confined. 
After  the  war,  Tabb  devoted  some 
time  to  music  and  taught  school. 
His  studies  led  him  toward  the  church, 
and  at  the  age  of  thirty-nine  he  received  the  priest's 
orders  in  the  Roman  Catholic  church.  When  he  died 


JOHN   BANNISTER  TABB 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

in  1909,  he  was  a  teacher  in  St.  Charles  College,  Ellicott 
City,  Maryland.     He  had  been  blind  for  two  years. 

Tabb's  poems  are  preeminently  "short  swallow-flights 
of  song,"  for  most  of  them  are  only  from  four  to  eight 
lines  long.  Some  of  these  verses  are  comic,  while  others 
are  grave  and  full  of  religious  ardor.  The  most  beautiful 
of  all  his  poems  are  those  of  nature.  The  one  called 
The  Brook  is  among  the  brightest  and  most  fanciful :  - 

"  It  is  the  mountain  to  the  sea 
That  makes  a  messenger  of  me : 
And,  lest  I  loiter  on  the  way 
And  lose  what  I  am  sent  to  say, 
He  sets  his  reverie  to  song 
And  bids  me  sing.it  all  day  long. 
Farewell !  for  here  the  stream  is  slow, 
And  I  have  many  a  mile  to  go."  1 

The  Water  Lily  is  another  dainty  product,  full  of  poetic 
feeling  for  nature :  — 

"  Whence,  O  fragrant  form  of  light, 

Hast  thou  drifted  through  the  night, 

Swanlike,  to  a  leafy  nest, 

On  the  restless  waves,  at  rest? 
"Art  thou  from  the  snowy  zone 

Of  a  mountain-summit  blown, 

Or  the  blossom  of  a  dream, 

Fashioned  in  the  foamy  stream?  "2 

In  Quips  and  Quiddits  he  loves  to  show  that  type  of 
humor  dependent  on  unexpected  changes  in  the  meaning 
of  words.  The  following  lines  illustrate  this  character 
istic  :  «  To  jewels  her  taste  did  incline  ; 

But  she  had  not  a  trinket  to  wear 
Till  she  slept  after  taking  quinine, 
And  awoke  with  a  ring  in  each  ear." 

1  Poems,  1894.  2  The  Water  Lily,  from  Poems,  1894. 


320 


SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 


Tabb's  power  lay  in  condensing  into  a  small  compass  a 
single  thought  or  feeling  and  giving  it  complete  artistic 
expression.  The  more  serious  poems,  especially  the  sacred 
ones,  sometimes  seem  to  have  too  slight  a  body  to  carry 
their  full  weight  of  thought,  but  the  idea  is  always  fully 
expressed,  no  matter  how  narrow  the  compass  of  the  verse. 
His  poetry  usually  has  the  qualities  of  lightness,  airiness, 
and  fancifulness. 


JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS,  1848-1908 

Joel  Chandler  Harris  was  born  at  Eatonton,  in  the  center 
of  Georgia  in  1848.     He  alludes  to  himself  laughingly  as 
"an  uncultured  Georgia  cracker." 
At  the  age  of  twelve,  he  was  setting 
type   for   a   country   newspaper 
and  living  upon  the  plantation  of 
the  wealthy  owner  of  this  paper, 
enjoying  the  freedom  of  his  well- 
selected  library,  hunting  coons, 
possums,    and   rabbits   with    his 
dogs,  and  listening  to  the 
stories  told  by  his  slaves. 
'"  The  boy  thus  became  well 
acquainted  with  many  of 
the  animal  fables  known 
to  the  negroes  of  Georgia. 

JOEL   CHANDLER    HARR.S  LatCr    ™    ^^    hC     ^^     * 

great  many  more  of  these 

tales,  while  traveling  through  the  cotton  states,  swapping 
yarns  with  the  negroes  after  he  had  gained  their  confidence. 
His  knowledge  of  their  hesitancy  about  telling  a  story  and 
his  sympathy  with  them  made  it  possible  for  him  to  hear 


JOEL   CHANDLER   HARRIS 


321 


rare  tales  when  another  would  probably  have  found  only 
silence.  Sometimes,  while  waiting  for  a  train,  he  would 
saunter  up  to  a  group  of  negroes  and  start  to  tell  a  story 
himself  and  soon  have  them  on  tiptoe  to  tell  him  one  that  he 
did  not  already  know.  In  many  ways  he  became  the  pos 
sessor  of  a  large  part  of  the  negro  folklore.  He  loved  a 
story  and  he  early  commenced  to  write  down  these  fables, 
making  of  them  such  delightful  works  of  art  that  all 
America  is  his  debtor, 
not  only  for  thus  preserv 
ing  the  folklore  of  a  prim 
itive  people  in  their  Amer 
ican  environment,  but  also 
for  the  genuine  pleasure 
derived  from  the  stories 
themselves.  They  are  re 
lated  with  such  humor, 
skill,  and  poetic  spirit  that 
they  almost  challenge 
comparison  with  Kipling's 
tales  of  the  jungle.  The 
hero  is  the  poor,  meek, 
timid  rabbit,  but  in  the  tales  he  becomes  the  witty,  sly, 
resourceful,  bold  adventurer,  who  acts  "sassy"  and  talks 
big.  Harris  says  that  "  it  needs  no  scientific  investigation 
to  show  why  he  [the  negro]  selects  as  his  hero  the  weakest 
and  most  harmless  of  all  animals,  and  brings  him  out  vic 
torious  in  contests  with  the  bear,  the  wolf,  and  the  fox.  It 
is  not  virtue  that  triumphs,  but  helplessness  ;  it  is  not  mal 
ice,  but  mischievousness."  Sometimes,  as  is  shown  in  The 
Wonderful  Tar  Baby  Story,  a  trick  of  the  fox  causes 
serious  trouble  to  the  rabbit ;  but  the  rabbit  usually  invents 
most  of  the  pranks  himself.  The  absurdly  incongruous 


BRER   RABBIT  AND  THE  TAR   BABY 
(Courtesy  of  D.  Appleton  &  Co.) 


322 


SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 


attitude  of  the  rabbit  toward  the  other  animals  is  shown  in 
the  following  conversation,  which  occurs  in  the  story  of 
Brother  Rabbit  and  Brother  Tiger,  published  in  Uncle  Re 
mus  and  His  Friends :  — 

"  Brer  Tiger  'low,  '  How  come  you  ain't  skeer'd  er  me,  Brer  Rabbit  ? 
All  de  yuther  creeturs  run  when  dey  hear  me  cominV 

"  Brer  Rabbit  say,  <  How  come  de  fleas  on  you  ain't  skeer'd  un  you  ? 
Dey  er  lots  littler  dan  what  I  is.' 

"  Brer  Tiger  'low, '  Hit's  mighty  good  fer  you  dat  I  done  had  my  din 
ner,  kaze  ef  I'd  a-been  hongry  I'd  a-snapped  you  up  back  dar  at  de 
creek.' 

"  Brer  Rabbit  say,  '  Ef  you'd  done  dat,  you'd  er  had  mo'  sense  in  yo' 
hide  dan  what  you  got  now.1 

"  Brer  Tiger  'low,  *  I  gwine  ter  let  you  off  dis  time,  but  nex'  time  I  see 
you,  watch  out ! ' 

"  Brer  Rabbit  say,  <  Bein's  you  so  monst'us  perlite,  I'll  let  you  off  too, 
but  keep  yo'  eye  open  nex'  time  you  see  me,  kaze  I'll  git  you  sho.'" 

The  glee  of  the  negro  in  the  rabbit's  nonchalant  bearing 
is  humorously  given  in  this  paragraph  :  — 

"  Well,  I  wish  ter  goodness  you  could  er  seed  'im  'bout  dat  time.  He 
went  'long  thoo  de  woods  ez  gay  ez  a  colt  in  a  barley-patch.  He  wunk 
at  de  trees,  he  shuck  his  fisties  at  de  stumps,  he  make  like  he  wuz  quoilin1 
wid  'is  shadder  kaze  it  foller  'long  atter  'im  so  close ;  en  he  went  on 
scan'lous,  mon!" 

The  three  books  that  contain  the  most  remarkable  of 
these  tales  are  :  Uncle  Remus,  His  Songs  and  His  Sayings 
(1880),  Nights  with  Uncle  Remus  (1881),  Uncle  Remus  and 
His  Friends  (1892).  In  the  volume,  Told  by  Uncle  Remus 
(1905),  the  same  negro  relates  more  stories  to  the  son  of 
the  "little  boy,"  who  had  many  years  before  listened  to 
the  earlier  tales.  The  one  thing  in  these  books  that  is 
absolutely  the  creation  of  Harris  is  the  character  of  Uncle 
Remus.  He  is  a  patriarchal  ex-slave,  who  seems  to  be  a 
storehouse  of  knowledge  concerning  Brer  Rabbit,  Brer 


THOMAS  NELSON  PAGE  323 

Fox,  Brer  B'ar,  and  indeed  all  the  animals  of  those  bygone 
days  when  animals  talked  and  lived  in  houses.  He  under 
stands  child  nature  as  well  as  he  knows  the  animals,  and 
from  the  corner  of  his  eye  he  keeps  a  sharp  watch  upon  his 
tiny  auditor  to  see  how  the  story  affects  him.  No  figure 
more  living,  original,  and  lovable  than  Uncle  Remus 
appears  in  southern  fiction.  In  him  Harris  has  created, 
not  a  burlesque  or  a  sentimental  impossibility,  but  an  im 
perishable  type,  the  type  of  the  true  plantation  negro. 

Harris  also  writes  entertainingly  of  the  slaves  and  their 
masters  on  the  plantation  and  of  the  poor  free  negroes,  in 
such  stories  as  Mingo  and  Other  Sketches  (1884)  and  Free 
Joe  (1887).  He  further  presents  a  vivid  picture  of  the 
Georgia  "crackers"  and  "moonshiners";  but  his  inimitable 
animal  stories,  and  Uncle  Remus  who  tells  them,  have  over 
shadowed  all  his  other  work,  and  remain  his  most  distinc 
tive  and  original  contribution  to  American  literature. 
These  tales  bid  fair  to  have  something  of  the  immortality 
of  those  myths  which  succeeding  generations  have  for 
thousands  of  years  enjoyed. 

THOMAS  NELSON   PAGE,  1853- 

Thomas  Nelson  Page  was  born  on  Oakland  Plantation 
in  Hanover  County,  Virginia,  in  1853.  He  graduated  at 
Washington  and  Lee  University  in  1872,  and  took  a  de 
gree  in  law  at  the  University  of  Virginia  in  1874.  He 
practiced  law  in  Richmond,  wrote  stories  and  essays 
upon  the  old  South,  and  later  moved  to  Washington  to 
live. 

His  best  stories  are  the  short  ones,  like  Marse  Chan  and 
Mek  Lady,  in  which  life  on  the  Virginia  plantations  during 
the  war  is  presented.  Page  is  a  natural  story-teller.  He 


324  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

wastes  no  time  in  analyzing,  describing,  and  explaining,  but 
sets  his  simple  plots  into  immediate  motion  and  makes  us 
acquainted  with  his  characters  through  their  actions  and 
speech.  The  regal  mistresses  of  the  plantations,  the  lordly 

but  kind-hearted  masters,  the  lov 
ing,  simple-minded  slaves,  and 
handsome  young  men  and  maid 
ens  are  far  from  complex  person 
alities.  They  have  a  primitive 
simplicity  and  ingenuousness 
which  belong  to  a  bygone  civiliza 
tion.  The  strongest  appeal  in  the 
stories  is  made  by  the  negroes, 
whose  faith  in  their  masters  is  un 
questioning  and  sometimes  pa 
thetic. 

Some  old  negro  who  had  been 
a  former  slave  usually  tells  the 
story,  and  paints  his  "marster,"  his  "missus,"  and  his 
"  white  folks,"  as  the  finest  in  the  region.  He  looks  back 
upon  the  bygone  days  as  a  time  when  "  nuthin'  warn  too 
good  for  niggers,"  and  is  sure  that  if  his  young  "  marster  " 
did  not  get  the  brush  "  twuz  cause  twuz  a  bob-tailed  fox." 
In  Meh  Lady  the  negro  relating  the  tale  is  the  true 
but  unconscious  hero.  This  kindly  presentation  of  the 
finest  traits  of  slave  days,  the  idealizing  of  the  characters, 
and  the  sympathetic  portrayal  of  the  warm  affection  ex 
isting  between  master  and  slave  give  to  Page's  books  a 
strong  note  of  romanticism.  The  humor  is  mild,  quaint, 
and  subtle,  and  it  often  lies  next  to  tears.  Page  is  pre 
eminently  a  short-story  writer.  He  possesses  the  restraint, 
the  compression,  the  art,  the  unity  of  idea  necessary  to 
the  production  of  a  good  short  story. 


THOMAS    NELSON    PAGE 


GEORGE  W.   CABLE 


325 


GEORGE  W.  CABLE,  1844- 

George  Washington  Cable  is  of  Virginia  and  New 
England  stock,  but  he  was  born  in  New  Orleans  in  1844, 
and  called  this  beautiful  city  his  home  until  1884,  when  he 
moved  to  Connecticut.  The  fol 
lowing  year  he  selected  North 
ampton,  Massachusetts,  as  a 
permanent  residence.  He  was 
but  fourteen  when  his  father 
died,  leaving  the  family  in  strait 
ened  circumstances.  The  boy 
thereupon  left  school  and  went 
to  work.  Four  years  later  he 
entered  the  Confederate  army. 
So  youthful  was  his  appearance, 
that  a  planter,  catching  sight  of 
him,  exclaimed,  "  Great  heavens ! 
Abe  Lincoln  told  the  truth.  We 
are  robbing  the  cradle  and  the 
grave  ! "  He  served  two  years 

in  the  southern  army,  and  after  the  war  returned  penniless 
to  his  native  city.  His  efforts  to  find  employment  are 
described  in  his  most  realistic  novel,  Dr.  Sevier.  He 
was  a  surveyor,  a  clerk  to  cotton  merchants,  and  a  reporter 
on  the  New  Orleans  Picayune ;  but  his  tastes  were  literary, 
and  after  the  publication  in  1879  of  a  volume  of  short 
stories,  Old  Creole  Days,  his  attention  was  turned  wholly  to 
literature. 

Cable's  Old  Creole  Days  is  a  collection  of  picturesque 
short  stories  of  the  romantic  Creoles  of  New  Orleans. 
Jean-ah-Poquelin>  the  story  of  an  old  recluse,  is  most  artis 
tically  told.  There  are  few  incidents;  Cable  merely  de- 


GEORGE  W.   CABLE 


326  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

scribes  the  former  roving  life  of  Jean,  tells  how  suddenly 
it  stopped,  how  he  never  again  left  the  old  home  where  he 
and  an  African  mute  lived,  and  how  Jean's  younger  brother 
mysteriously  disappeared,  and  the  suspicion  of  his  murder 
rested  upon  Jean's  shoulders.  The  explanation  of  these 
points  is  unfolded  by  hints,  conjectures,  and  rare  glimpses 
into  the  Poquelin  grounds  at  night,  and  finally  by  an  im 
pressive  but  simple  description  of  Jean's  funeral,  at  which 
the  terrible  secret  is  completely  revealed.  The  deftest 
and  finest  touch  of  an  artist  is  seen  in  the  working  out  of 
this  pathetic  story. 

Madame  Delphine,  now  included  in  the  volume  Old 
Creole  Days,  is  equally  the  product  of  a  refined  art.  Here 
is  shown  the  anguish  of  a  quadroon  mother  who  turns 
frantically  from  one  to  another  for  help  to  save  her  beauti 
ful  child,  the  ivory-tinted  daughter  of  the  South.  When 
every  one  fails,  the  mother  heart  makes  one  grand  sacrifice 
by  which  the  end  is  gained,  and  she  dies  at  the  foot  of  the 
altar  in  an  agony  of  remorse  and  love.  The  beautiful 
land  of  flowers,  the  jasmine-scented  night  of  the  South,  the 
poetic  chivalry  of  a  proud,  high-souled  race  arc  painted 
vividly  in  this  idyllic  story.  Its  people  are  not  mortals,  its 
beauty  is  not  of  earth,  but,  like  the  carved  characters  on 
Keats's  Grecian  urn,  they  have  immortal  youth  and  cannot 
change.  Keats  could  have  said  to  the  lovers  in  Madame 
Delphine,  as  to  his  own  upon  the  vase  :  — 

"  Forever  wilt  thou  love,  and  she  be  fair!  " 

Cable's  best  long  works  are  The  Grandissimes  (1880), 
Dr.  Sevier  (1884),  and  Bonaventure,  a  Prose  Pastoral  of 
Arcadian  Louisiana  (1888).  Of  these  three,  The  Grandis 
simes  is  easily  first  in  merit.  It  is  a  highly  romantic  workf 
full  of  dramatic  episodes,  and  replete  with  humor.  The 


GEORGE  W.   CABLE  327 

abundance  and  variety  of  interesting  characters  in  this 
romance  evidence  the  great  fertility  and  power  of  inven 
tion  possessed  by  Cable.  First  of  all,  there  is  the  splendid 
Creole,  Honore  Grandissime,  the  head  of  the  family,  —  a 
man  who  sees  far  into  the  future,  and  places  his  trust  in 
the  young  American  republic.  Combating  the  narrow 
prejudices  of  his  family,  he  leads  them  in  spite  of  them 
selves  to  riches  and  honor.  Opposing  him  in  family 
counsels  is  his  uncle,  Agricola  Fusilier,  the  brave,  bluster 
ing,  fire-eating  reactionary.  There  is  also  the  beautiful 
quadroon,  Palmyre  Philosophe.  The  "  united  grace  and 
pride  of  her  movement  was  inspiring,  but  —  what  shall 
we  say?  —  feline?  It  was  a  femininity  without  human 
ity,  —  something  that  made  her,  with  all  her  superbness,  a 
creature  that  one  would  want  to  find  chained."  Beside 
her  are  the  dwarf  Congo  woman  and  Clemence,  the  sharp- 
tongued  negress,  who  sells  her  wares  in  the  streets  and 
sends  her  bright  retorts  back  to  the  young  bloods  who 
taunt  her.  There  is  Bras  Coupe",  the  savage  slave,  who 
had  once  been  a  chief  in  Africa  and  who  fights  like  a  fiend 
against  enslavement,  blights  the  broad  acres  with  his  curse, 
lives  an  exile  in  snake-infested  swamps,  and  finally  meets  a 
most  tragic  fate.  These  unusual  and  somewhat  sensa 
tional  characters  give  high  color,  warmth,  and  variety  to 
the  romance.  The  two  exquisite  Creole  women,  Aurora 
and  her  daughter,  Clotilde,  are  a  triumph  of  delicate 
characterization,  being  at  one  and  the  same  time  winning, 
lovable,  illogical,  innocent,  capable,  and  noble.  The  love 
scene  in  which  Aurora  says  "  no,"  while  she  means  "  yes," 
and  is  not  taken  at  her  word,  is  as  delicious  a  bit  of  humor 
and  sentiment  as  there  is  in  modern  fiction.  In  neither 
Dr.  Sevier  nor  Bonaventure  are  there  the  buoyancy,  vital 
interest,  and  unity  of  impression  of  The  Grandissimes, 


328  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

which  is  one  of  the  artistic  products  of  American  novelists. 
Cable  may  not  have  rendered  the  Creole  character  exactly 
true  to  life ;  but  he  has  in  a  measure  done  for  these  high- 
spirited,  emotional,  brave  people  what  Irving  did  for  the 
Knickerbockers  of  New  York  and  what  Hawthorne  did 
for  the  Puritan. 

Cable  has  also  given  graphic  pictures  of  New  Orleans. 
His  poetic  powers  of  description  enabled  him  to  make  the 
picturesque  streets,  the  quaint  interiors,  the  swamps,  bay 
ous,  forests,  and  streams  very  vivid  realities  to  his  readers. 
He  has  warmth  of  feeling  and  a  most  refined  and  subtle 
humor.  His  scenes  are  sometimes  blood-curdling,  his  char 
acters  unusual,  and  the  deeds  described  sensational;  but 
in  his  best  work,  his  manner  is  so  quiet,  his  English  so 
elegant,  and  his  treatment  so  poetic,  that  the  effect  is 
never  crude  or  harsh,  but  always  mild  and  harmonious. 

JAMES  LANE  ALLEN,  1849- 

James  Lane  Allen  was  born  in  1849  near  Lexington,  in 
the  rich  blue-grass  section  of  Kentucky.  He  did  not  leave 
the  state  until  he  was  twenty-two,  so  that  his  education 
both  at  school  and  college  was  received  in  Kentucky,  and 
all  his  early  and  most  impressionable  years  were  passed 
amid  Kentucky  scenes.  Many  of  these  years  were  spent 
on  a  farm,  where  his  faculty  for  observing  was  used  to 
good  advantage.  As  he  grew  older,  he  took  his  share  in 
the  farm  work  and  labored  in  the  fields  of  hemp,  corn, 
and  wheat,  which  he  describes  in  his  works.  He  grad 
uated  from  Transylvania  College,  Lexington,  and  taught 
for  several  years,  but  after  1884  devoted  himself  to  writ 
ing. 

In  1891,    Allen  published  Flute  and   Violin  and  Other 


JAMES  LANE  ALLEN 


329 


Kentucky  Tales  and  Romances.  For  artistic  completeness, 
Allen  wrote  nothing  superior  to  the  story  in  this  collection, 
entitled,  King  Solomon  of  Kentucky,  a  tale  of  an  idle  vaga 
bond  who  proved  capable  of  a  heroism  from  which  many 
heroes  might  have  flinched.  All  of  the  stories  are  roman 
tic  and  pathetic.  The  Ken 
tucky  Cardinal  (1894)  and 
Aftermath  ( 1 895)  are  poetic 
idyls,  whose  scenes  are 
practically  confined  within 
one  small  Kentucky  gar 
den,  where  the  strawberries 
grow,  the  cardinal  sings, 
and  the  maiden  watches 
across  the  fence  her  lover 
at  his  weeding.  The  com 
pass  of  the  garden  is  not 
too  small  to  embody  the 
very  spirit  of  out-of-doors, 
which  is  continuously  pres 
ent  in  these  two  delight 
ful  stories. 

From  the  human  point  of  view,  The  Choir  Invisible  ( 1 897) 
is  Allen's  strongest  book.  John  Gray,  Mrs.  Falconer,  and 
Amy  are  convincingly  alive.  No  better  proof  of  the  vital 
interest  they  arouse  is  needed  than  the  impatience  felt  by 
the  reader  at  John's  mistaken  act  of  chivalry,  which  causes 
the  bitterest  sorrow  to  him  and  Mrs.  Falconer.  Allen's  later 
works,  The  Reign  of  Law  (1900),  The  Mettle  of  the  Pasture 
(1903),  The  Bride  of  the  Mistletoe  (1909),  lose  in  charm 
and  grace  what  they  gain  as  studies  of  moral  problems. 
The  hardness  and  incompleteness  of  outline  of  the  charac 
ter  portrayals  and  the  grimness  of  spirit  in  the  telling  of 


JAMES   LANE  ALLEN 


330  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

the  tales  make  these  novels  uninviting  after  the  luxuriance 
of  the  earlier  books. 

The  setting  is  an  important  part  of  Allen's  stories.  He 
describes  with  the  graphic  touch  of  a  true  nature  lover  the 
witchery  of  Kentucky's  fallow  meadows,  the  beauty  of  her 
hempfields,  the  joys  of  a  June  day.  A  noisy  conflict  could 
not  occur  in  the  restful  garden  of  The  Kentucky  Cardinal^ 
while  in  the  frontier  garden  of  Mrs.  Falconer,  in  The  Choir 
Invisible,  the  ambitious,  fiery  John  Gray  seems  not  out  of 
harmony  because  the  presence  of  the  adjacent  wild  forest 
affects  the  entire  scene.  In  one  way  or  another,  the  land 
scapes,  by  preparing  the  reader  for  the  moods  of  the  char 
acters,  play  a  part  in  all  of  Allen's  novels.  He  is  a  master 
of  the  art  that  holds  together  scenes  and  actions.  His 
descriptive  powers  are  unusual,  and  his  style  is  highly 
wrought.  It  is  more  that  of  the  literary  essayist  than  of 
the  simple  narrator,  and  it  is  full  of  poetic  touches,  deli 
cate  suggestions,  and  refined  art. 


MARY   N.  MURFREE  (CHARLES  EGBERT  CRADDOCK),  1850- 

Miss  Mary  Noailles  Murfree,  better  known  as  Charles 
Egbert  Craddock,  was  born  in  Murfreesboro,  Tennessee, 
in  1850.  For  fifteen  years  she  spent  her  summers  in  the 
Tennessee  mountains  among  the  people  of  whom  she 
writes.  Her  pen  name  of  Charles  Egbert  Craddock  de 
ceived  her  publishers  into  the  belief  that  she  was  a  man. 
Both  Howells  and  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich  accepted  her 
stories  for  the  Atlantic  Monthly  without  suspecting  her  sex, 
and  Aldrich  was  a  surprised  man  the  day  she  entered  his 
office  and  introduced  herself  as  Charles  Egbert  Craddock. 

The  stories  that  suggested  to  her  editors  a  masculine 
hand  are  lively  recitals  of  family  feuds,  moonshiners'  raids, 


MARY  N.  MURFREE    (CHARLES   EGBERT  CRADDOCK)       331 

circuit  court  sessions,  fights  over  land  grants,  discoveries 
of  oil,  and  many  similar  incidents,  which  make  up  the  life 
of  a  people  separated  from  the  modern  world  by  almost 
inaccessible  mountains.  The  rifle 
is  used  freely  by  this  people,  and 
murder  is  frequent,  but  honor  and 
bravery,  daring  and  sacrifice,  are 
not  absent,  and  Craddock  finds 
among  the  women,  as  well  as  the 
men,  examples  of  magnanimity 
and  heroism  that  thrill  the  reader. 
The  presence  of  the  mountains 
is  always  imminent,  and  seems  to 
impress  the  lives  of  the  people 
in  some  direct  way.  To  Cynthia 
Ware,  for  instance,  in  the  story, 

Drifting    Down    Lost    Creek,    Pine  (Charles  Egbert  Craddock) 

Mountain  seems  to  stand  as  a  bar  to  all  her  ambitions  and 
dreams :  — 

"Whether  the  skies  are  blue  or  gray,  the  dark,  austere  line  of  its 
summit  limits  the  horizon.  It  stands  against  the  west  like  a  barrier. 
It  seems  to  Cynthia  Ware  that  nothing  which  went  beyond  this  barrier 
ever  came  back  again.  One  by  one  the  days  passed  over  it,  and  in 
splendid  apotheosis,  in  purple  and  crimson  and  gold,  they  were  received 
into  the  heavens  and  returned  no  more.  She  beheld  love  go  hence, 
and  many  a  hope.  Even  Lost  Creek  itself,  meandering  for  miles  be 
tween  the  ranges,  suddenly  sinks  into  the  earth,  tunnels  an  unknown 
channel  beneath  the  mountain,  and  is  never  seen  again." 

And,  finally,  after  a  tremendous  self-sacrifice,  when  all  ap 
pears  lost  and  her  future  looks  colorless  and  hopeless,  she 
fears  that  the  years  of  her  life  are  "  like  the  floating  leaves 
drifting  down  Lost  Creek,  valueless,  purposeless,  and 
vaguely  vanishing  in  the  mountains."  All  of  the  stories 


332 


SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 


are  by  no  means  so  tragically  sad  as  this  one,  but  all  are 
overshadowed  by  the  mountains.  Among  the  best  of  the 
novels,  Down  the  Ravme  and  The  Prophet  of  the  Great 
Smoky  Mountain  may  be  mentioned.  Craddock  shows 
marked  ability  in  delineating  this  primitive  type  of  level 
headed,  independent  people,  and  she  tells  their  story  with 
ease  and  vigor.  The  individual  characters  are  not  strongly 
differentiated  in  her  many  books,  and  the  heroines  bear 
considerable  resemblance  to  each  other,  but  the  entire  com 
munity  of  mountain  folk,  their  ideals,  hopes,  and  circum 
scribed  lives  are  clearly  and  vividly  shown. 

MADISON  J.  CAWEIN,   1865-1914 

Cawein  spent  the  greater  part  of  his  life  in  Louisville, 
Kentucky,  where  he  was  born  in  1865  and  died  in  1914. 

He  wrote  more  than  twenty 
volumes  of  verse,  the  best  of 
which  he  collected  in  five  vol 
umes  (1907)  and  later  in  one 
volume  (1911).  The  apprecia 
tive  English  critic,  Edmund 
Gosse,  in  his  Introduction  to  the 
1907  collection,  calls  Cawein 
"the  only  hermit  thrush"  sing 
ing  "  through  an  interval  com 
paratively  tuneless."  W.  D. 
Howells's  (p.  373)  Foreword  in 
the  1911  volume  emphasizes 
Cawein's  unusual  power  of  mak 
ing  common  things  *  live  and 
glow  thereafter  with  inextinguishable  beauty.' 

Cawein  actually  writes  much  of  his  poetry  out  of  doors 
in  the  presence  of  the  nature  which  he  is  describing.     His 


MADiSON   J.   CAWEIN 


MADISON  J.   CAWEIN  333 

lyrics  of  nature  are  his  best  verse.     He  can  even  diminish 
the  horror  of  a  Kentucky  feud  by  placing  it  among :  — 

"  Frail  ferns  and  dewy  mosses  and  dark  brush,  — 

Impenetrable  briers,  deep  and  dense, 
And  wiry  bushes,  —  brush,  that  seemed  to  crush 

The  struggling  saplings  with  its  tangle,  whence 
Sprawled  out  the  ramble  of  an  old  rail-fence." 

In  his  verses  the  catbird  nests  in  the  trumpet  vine,  the 
pewee  pours  forth  a  woodland  welcome,  the  redbird  sings 
a  vesper  song,  the  lilacs  are  musky  of  the  May,  the  blue 
bells  and  the  wind  flowers  bloom.  We  hear 

"...  tinkling  in  the  clover  dells, 
The  twilight  sound  of  cattle  bells." 

His  verse  often  shows  exactness  of  observation,  charac 
teristic  of  modern  students  of  nature,  as  well  as  a  romantic 
love  of  the  outdoor  world.  Note  the  specific  references 
to  the  shape  and  color  of  individual  natural  objects  in 
these  lines  from  Cawein  :  — 

"  May-apples,  ripening  yellow,  lean 
With  oblong  fruit,  a  lemon-green, 
Near  Indian-turnips,  long  of  stem, 
That  bear  an  acorn-oval  gem." 

He  loves  the  nymphs  of  mythology,  the  dryads,  naiads, 
and  the  fairies.  One  of  his  poems  is  called  There  Are 
Fairies :  — 

"  There  are  fairies,  I  could  swear 
I  have  seen  them  busy  where 
Rose-leaves  loose  their  scented  hair, 

Leaning  from  the  window  sill 
Of  a  rose  or  daffodil, 
Listening  to  their  serenade, 
All  of  cricket  music  made." 


334  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

In  luxuriance  of  imagery  and  profuse  appeal  to  the 
senses,  he  is  the  Keats  of  the  South.  Lines  like  these 
remind  us  of  the  greater  poet's  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes:  — 

"  Into  the  sunset's  turquoise  marge 
The.  moon  dips,  like  a  pearly  barge 
Enchantment  sails  through  magic  seas 
To  fairyland  Hesperides." 

Keats  exclaims  :  — 

"  O  for  a  beaker  full  of  the  warm  South." 

Cawein  proceeds  to  fill  the  beaker  from  the  summer  of  a 
southern  land,  where 

"  The  west  was  hot  geranium-red," 

where 

"  The  dawn  is  a  warp  of  fever, 

The  eve  is  a  woof  of  fire," 
and  where 

"  The  heliotropes  breathe  drowsy  musk 
Into  the  jasmine-dreamy  air." 

Cawein  sometimes  suffers  from  profuseness  and  lack  of 
pruning,  but  the  music,  sentiment,  imaginative  warmth,  and 
profusion  of  nature's  charms  in  his  best  lyrics  rouse  keen 
delight  in  any  lover  of  poetry.  While  he  revels  in  the 
color,  warmth,  and  joys  of  nature,  it  should  also  be  observed 
that  he  can  occasionally  strike  that  deeper  note  which 
characterizes  the  great  nature  poets  of  the  English  race. 
In  A  Prayer  for  Old  Age,  he  asks:  - 

"  Never  to  lose  my  faith  in  Nature,  God  : 

But  still  to  find 

Worship  in  trees  ;  religion  in  each  sod ; 
And  in  the  wind 
that  breathe  the  universal  God.w 


SUMMARY  335 

SUMMARY 

The  lack  of  towns,  the  widely  separated  population,  the 
aristocratic  nature  of  the  civilization  depending  on  slave 
labor,  the  absorption  of  the  people  in  political  questions, 
especially  the  question  of  slavery,  the  attitude  toward 
literature  as  a  profession,  the  poverty  of  public  education, 
the  extreme  conservatism  and  isolation  of  the  South,  and, 
finally,  the  Civil  War,  and  the  period  of  reconstruction  after 
it,  —  were  all  influences  that  served  to  retard  the  develop 
ment  of  literature  in  the  South. 

The  greatest  name  in  southern  literature  is  that  of  Edgar 
Allan  Poe,  the  literary 


the  modern  short  story,  the  writer  of  superlatively  melodious 
verse.  He  was  followed  by  Simms,  who  was  among  the 
first  in  the  South  to  live  by  his  peru  His  tales  of  adventure 
are  still  interesting  and  important  for  the  history  that 
they  embody.  Timrod's  spontaneity  and  strength  appear 
in  lyrics  of  war,  nature,  and  love.  J~Iay_ne^_a.  skilled  poetic 
artist,  is  at  his  best  in  lyrics  of  nature.  Lanier's  poems 
of  nature  embody  high  ideals  in  verse  of  unusual  melody, 
and  voice  a  faith  in  "the  greatness  of  God,"  as  intense  as 
that  of  any  Puritan  poet.  Lanier  shared  with  Simms, 
Hayne,  and  Timrod  the  bitter  misfortunes  of  the  war. 
Father  Ryan  is  affectionately  remembered  for  his  stirring 
war  lyrics  and  Father  Tabb  for  his  nature  poems,  sacred 
verse,  and  entertaining  humor.  The  nature  poetry  of 
Cawein  abounds  in  the  color  and  warmth  of  the  South. 

In  modern  southern  fiction  there  is  to  be  found  some  of 
the  m  os  t_Jmagfrra±ive,  artistic,,  and  romantic  workj)f_the 
entire  country  in  the  latter  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury.  Rich  local  color  renders  much  of  this  fiction  attrac 
tive.  Harris  fascinates  the  ear  of  the  young  world  with 


336  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

the  Georgia  negro's  tales  of  Brer  Fox  and  Brer  Rabbit. 
The  Virginia  negroes  live  in  the  stories  of  Page.  Craddock 
introduces  the  Tennessee  mountaineer,  and  Allen,  the  Ken 
tucky  farmer,  scholar,  and  gentleman,  while  Cable  paints 
the  refined  Creole  in  the  fascinating  city  of  New  Orleans. 

Notwithstanding  the  use  of  dialect  and  other  realistic 
touches  of  local  color,  the  fiction  is  largely  j^mantic^.  The 
careful  analysis  of  motives  and  detailed  accounts  of  the 
commonplace,  such  as  the  eastern  realists  developed  in  the 
last  part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  are  for  the  most  part 
absent  from  this  southern  fiction. 

A  strong  distinguishing  feature  of  this  body  of  fiction  is 
the  large  part  played  by  natural  scenes.  Allen  shows 
unusual  skill  in  employing  naturetcTneighten  his  effects. 
If  the  poetic  and  vivid  scenes  were  removed  from  Cable's 
stories,  they  would  lose  a  large  part  of  their  charm.  When 
Miss  Murfree  chooses  eastern  Tennessee  for  the  scene  of 
her  novels,  she  never  permits  the  mountains  to  be  forgot 
ten.  These  writers  are  lovers  of  nature  as  well  as  of 
human  beings.  The  romantic  prose  fiction  as  well  as  the 
poetry  is  invested  with  color  and  beauty. 

REFERENCES 

Page's  The  Old  South. 

Page's  Social  Life  in  Old  Virginia  before  the  War* 

Hart's  Slavery  and  Abolition. 

Baskerville's  Southern  Writers,  2  vols. 

Link's  Pioneers  of  Southern  Literature,  2  vols. 

Moses's  The  Literature  of  the  South. 

Holliday's  A  History  of  Southern  Literature. 

Manly's  Southern  Literature. 

Painter's  Poets  of  the  South. 

Woodberry's  The  Life  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  Personal  and  Literary, 
with  his  chief  Correspondence  with  Men  of  Letters,  2  vols.,  1909.  (The 
best  life.) 


SUGGESTED  READINGS 


337 


Woodberry  and  Stedman's  The  Works  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe  with  a 
Memoir,  Critical  Introductions,  and  Notes,  10  vols. 

Harrison's  The  Virginia  Edition  pf  the  Works  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 
17  vols.  (Contains  excellent  critical  essays.) 

Harrison's  Life  and  Letters  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  2  vols. 

Stedman's  Poets  of  America.    (Poe.) 

Fruit's  The  Mind  and  Art  of  Poe 's  Poetry. 

Canby's  The  Short  Story  in  English,  Chap.  XI.     (Poe.) 

Baldwin's  American  Short  Stories.    (Poe.) 

Payne's  American  Literary  Criticism.    (Poe.) 

Prescott's  Selections  from  the  Critical  Writings  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe, 
edited  with  an  Introduction  and  Notes. 

Gates's  Studies  and  Appreciations.    (Poe.) 

Trent's  William  Gilmore  Simms. 

Erskine's  Leading  American  Novelists.     (Simms.) 

Ward's  Memorial  of  Sidney  Ltinier,  in  Poems  of  Sidney  Lanier, 
edited  by  his  Wife. 

Burt's  The  Lanier  Book. 

Burt  and  Cable's  The  Cable  Story  Book. 

Page's  The  Page  Story  Book. 

SUGGESTED   READINGS 

Selections  (not  always  the  ones  indicated  below)  from  all  the 
authors  mentioned  in  this  chapter  may  be  found  in  Trent's  Southern 
Writers,  524  pages,  and  Mims  and  Payne's  Southern  Prose  and  Poetry 
for  Schools,  440  pages.  Selections  from  the  majority  of  the  poets  are 
given  in  Painter's  Poets  of  the  South,  237  pages,  and  Weber's  Selections 
from  the  Southern  Poets,  221  pages.  The  best  poems  of  Poe  and 
Lanier  may  be  found  in  Page's  The  Chief  American  Poets. 

POETRY 

Poe.  —  His  best  poems  are  short,  and  may  soon  be  read.  They  are 
Annabel  Lee,  To  One  in  Paradise,  The  Raven,  The  Haunted  Palace, 
The  Conqueror  Worm,  Ulalume,  Israfel,  Lenore,  and  The  Bells. 

Hayne.  —A  Dream  of  the  South  Winds,  Aspects  of  the  Pines,  The 
Woodland  Phases,  and  A  Storm  in  the  Distance. 

Timrod.  —  Spring,  The  Lily  Confidante,  An  Exotic,  The  Cotton 
Boll,  and  Carolina. 


338  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

Lanier.  —  The  Marshes  of  Glynn,  Sunrise,  The  Song  of  the  Chatta- 
hoochee,  Tampa  Robins,  Love  and  Song,  The  Stirrup  Cup,  and  The 
Symphony. 

Ryan.  —  The  Conquered  Banner,  and  The  Sword  of  Robert  Lee. 

Tabb.  — Fourteen  of  his  complete  poems  may  be  found  on  two  pages 
(489  and  490)  of  Stedman's  An  American  Anthology.  Much  of  Tabb's 
best  work  is  contained  in  his  little  volume  entitled  Poems  (1894). 

Cawein.  —  The  Whippoorwill,  There  are  Fairies,  The  Shadow 
Garden,  One  Day  and  Another,  In  Solitary  Places,  A  Twilight  Moth, 
To  a  Wind  Flower,  Beauty  and  Art,  A  Prayer  for  Old  Age. 

The  best  two  volumes  of  general  selections  from  Cawein's  verse 
have  been  published  in  England  and  given  the  titles,  Kentucky  Poems 
(1902),  264  pages,  edited  with  an  excellent  Introduction  by  Edmund 
Gosse,  and  New  Poems  (1909),  248  pages.  His  best  nature  poetry 
will  be  found  in  his  single  American  volume  of  selections,  entitled 
Poems,  Selected  by  the  Author  (191 1). 

PROSE 

Poe.  —  Poe's  best  short  story  is  The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher, 
but  it  is  better  to  begin  with  such  favorites  as  either  The  Murders 
in  the  Rue  Morgue,  The  Gold-Bug,  or  A  Descent  into  the  Maelstrom. 
There  are  many  poor  editions  of  Poe's  Tales.  Cody's  The  Best  Tales 
of  Edgar  Allan  Poe  and  Macmillan's  Pocket  Classics  edition  may  be 
recommended.  The  best  part  of  his  critical  remarks  on  short-story 
writing  is  quoted  in  this  text,  p.  299.  A  part  of  his  essay,  The  Poetic 
Principle,  is  given  in  Trent. 

Simms.  —  Mims  and  Payne  give  (pp.  50-69)  a  good  selection  from 
The  Yemassee,  describing  an  Indian  episode  in  the  war  of  1715,  between 
the  Spaniards  and  the  Indians  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  English  on 
the  other.  Trent  gives  (pp.  186-189)  fr°m  The  Partisan,  a  scene  laid 
at  the  time  of  the  Revolutionary  War. 

Harris.  —  Read  anywhere  from  Uncle  Remus,  his  Songs,  and  his 
Sayings  (1880),  Nights  with  Uncle  Remus  (1881),  Uncle  Remus  and 
his  Friends  (1892).  An  excellent  selection,  Brother  Billy  Goat  eats 
his  Dinner,  is  given  in  Trent. 

Cable.  —  Madame  Delphine  and  Jean-ah-Poquelin,  two  of  Cable's 
best  short  stories,  are  published  under  the  title,  Old  Creole  Days. 

Page,  Allen,  and  Craddock.  —  From  Page,  read  either  Marse  Chan  or 
Meh  Lady  ;  from  Allen,  King  Solomon  of  Kentucky,  and  Two  Gentlemen 


QUESTIONS  AND   SUGGESTIONS  339 

of  Kentucky,  from  Flute  and  Violin,  or  The  Kentucky  Cardinal,  or  The 
Lhoir  Invisible ;  from  Craddock,  selections  from  Down  the  Raving  In 
eke  Tennessee  Mountains ,  or  The  Prophet  of  the  Great  Smoky  Mountain* 


QUESTIONS   AND   SUGGESTIONS 

Poetry. — Which  of  Poe's  nine  poems  indicated  for  reading  pleases 
you  most  and  which  least?  What  is  the  chief  source  of  your  pleasure 
in  reading  him?  Do  you  feel  like  reading  any  of  his  poems  a  second 
time  or  repeating  parts  of  them  ?  Account  for  the  extraordinary 
vitality  of  Poe?s  verse.  What  is  the  subject  matter  of  most  of  his 
poems  ? 

What  is  the  subject  of  Lanier's  best  verse?  Compare  his  melody 
and  ideals  with  Poe's.  Is  Lanier's  Song  of  the  Chattahoochee  as 
melodious  as  Tennyson's  The  Brook  ?  Which  is  the  most  beautiful 
stanza  in  My  Springs  ?  What  are  the  strongest  and  most  distinguishing 
qualities  of  Lanier's  verse  ?  Which  of  these  are  especially  prominent 
ia  The  Marshes  of  Glynn  and  Sunrise,  and  which  in  Tampa  Robins? 

Compare  Hayne  and  Timrod  for  artistic  finish,  definiteness,  and 
spontaneity.  Does  Hayne  or  Timrod  love  nature  more  for  herself 
alone  ?  Select  the  best  stanza  from  Timrod's  The  Lily  Confidante  and 
compare  it  with  your  favorite  stanza  from  Lanier's  My  Springs.  From 
each  of  the  poems  of  Hayne  suggested  for  reading,  select  some  of  the 
most  artistic  creations  of  his  fancy. 

1  ndicate  the  patriotism  and  the  pathos  in  Father  Ryan's  verse. 

Point  out  some  unique  qualities  in  Tabb's  poetry.  Is  the  length  of 
his  poems  in  accordance  with  Poe's  dictum?  Select  some  passage 
showing  special  delicacy  or  originality  in  describing  nature. 

What  in  Cawein's  verse  would  indicate  that  he  wrote  his  poems 
out  of  doors  ?  Compare  the  definiteness  of  his  references  to  nature 
with  Hayne's.  What  specific  references  in  Cawein's  nature  poems 
please  you  most  ?  Compare  Keats's  poems  On  the  Grasshopper  and 
Cricket,  Fancy,  and  stanzas  here  and  there  from  The  Eve  of  St.  Agues 
with  Cawein's  imagery  and  method  of  appealing  to  the  senses* 

prose.  —  Take  one  of  Foe's  tales,  and  point  out  hew  it  illustrates  his 
theory  of  the  short  story  given  on  p.  299.  In  order  to  hold  the  atten 
tion  of  an  average  audience,  should  you  select  for  reading  one  of  Irving's, 
Hawthorne's,  or  Poe's  short  stories  ?  Should  you  use  the  same  principle 
in  selecting  one  of  these  stories  for  a  friend  to  read  quietly  by  himself? 


340  SOUTHERN  LITERATURE 

Is  Simms  dramatic  ?  In  what  particulars  does  he  remind  you  of 
Cooper  ?  In  the  selection  from  The  Yemassee  (Mims  and  Payne)  are 
there  any  qualities  which  Poe  indicates  for  a  short  story  ? 

What  is  the  secret  of  the  attractiveness  of  the  stories  of  Joel  Chandler 
Harris  ?  Point  out  some  valuable  philosophy  of  human  nature  which 
frequently  crops  out.  What  special  characteristics  of  Uncle  Remus  are 
revealed  in  these  tales  ?  What  are  the  most  prominent  qualities  of 
Brer  Rabbit  ?  Why  does  the  negro  select  him  for  his  hero  ?  What  is 
the  final  result  of  Brer  Fox's  trick  in  The  Wonderful  Tar  Baby  Story  ? 
What  resemblances  and  differences  can  you  find  between  the  animal 
stories  of  Harris  and  Kipling  ? 

Why  are  Cable's  stories  called  romantic  ?  What  remarkable  feature 
do  you  notice  about  their  local  color  ?  Give  instances  of  his  poetic  touch 
and  of  his  power  to  draw  character.  Does  he  reveal  his  characters  in 
a  plain,  matter-of-fact  manner,  or  by  means  of  subtle  touches  and 
unexpected  revelations  ? 

Compare  Page's  negroes  with  Uncle  Remus.  What  characteristics  of 
Virginia  life  do  the  stories  of  Page  reveal  ?  What  do  you  find  most 
attractive  in  him  as  a  story-teller  ? 

What  impression  does  Allen's  King  Solomon  of  Kentucky  make  on 
you  ?  What  are  some  of  the  strong  situations  in  The  Choir  Invisible  ? 
What  effect  does  the  natural  setting  have  on  his  scenes  ? 

In  the  presentation  of  what  scenes  does  Craddock  excel?  What  are 
some  of  the  characteristics  of  her  mountain  people  ?  Is  the  individuality 
of  the  characters  strongly  marked  or  are  they  more  frequently  general 
types  ?  In  what  parts  of  the  South  are  the  scenes  of  the  stories  of 
Cable,  Page,  Allen,  and  Craddock  chiefly  laid  ?  How  should  you  define 
"  local  color  "  in  terms  of  the  work  of  each  of  these  writers  ? 


CHAPTER   VI 
WESTERN  LITERATURE 

The  Newness  of  the  West.  —  It  is  difficult  for  the  young 
of  to-day  to  realize  that  Wisconsin  and  Iowa  were  not 
states  when  Hawthorne  published  his  Twice  Told  Tales 
(1837),  that  Lowell's  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal  { 1848)  was 
finished  ten  years  before  Minnesota  became  a  state,  that 
Longfellow's  Hiawatha  (1855)  appeared  six  years  before 
the  admission  of  Kansas,  and  Holmes's  The  Autocrat  of  tJie 
Breakfast  Table  (1858),  nine  years  before  the  admission  of 
Nebraska.  In  1861  Mark  Twain  went  to  the  West  in  a 
primitive  stagecoach.  Bret  Harte  had  finished  The  Luck 
of  Roaring  Camp  ( 1 868)  before  San  Francisco  was  reached 
by  a  transcontinental  railroad. 

Even  after  the  early  pioneers  had  done  their  work,  the 
population  of  the  leading  states  of  the  West  underwent  too 
rapid  a  change  for  quick  assimilation.  Between  1870  and 
1880  the  population  of  Minnesota  increased  77  per  cent; 
Kansas,  173  per  cent ;  Nebraska,  267  per  cent.  This  pop 
ulation  was  mostly  agricultural,  and  it  was  busy  subduing 
the  soil  and  getting  creature  comforts. 

Mark  Twain  says  of  the  advance  guard  of  the  pioneers 
who  went  to  the  far  West  to  conquer  this  new  country :  — 

"  It  was  the  only  population  of  the  kind  that  the  world  has  ever  seen 
gathered  together,  and  it  is  not  likely  that  the  world  will  ever  see  its  like 
again.  For,  observe,  it  was  an  assemblage  of  two  hundred  thousand 
ynungmen  —  not  simpering,  dainty,  kid-gloved  weaklings,  but  stalwart, 
muscular,  dauntless  young  braves,  brimful  of  push  and  energy,  and 


342  WESTERN   LITERATURE 

royally  endowed  with  every  attribute  that  goes  to  make  up  a  peerless 
and  magnificent  manhood  —  the  very  pick  and  choice  of  the  world's 
glorious  ones.1'1 

In  even  as  recent  a  period  as  the  twenty  years  from  1880 
to  1900,  the  population  of  Minnesota  increased  124  per 
cent;  Nebraska,  135  per  cent;  and  Colorado,  177  per 
cent.  This  increase  indicates  something  of  the  strenuous 
work  necessary  on  the  physical  side  to  prepare  comfortable 
permanent  homes  in  the  country,  town,  and  city,  and  to 
plan  and  execute  the  other  material  adaptations  necessary 
for  progressive  civilized  life  and  trade.  It  is  manifest  that 
such  a  period  of  stress  is  not  favorable  to  the  development 
of  literature.  Although  the  population  of  California  in 
creased  60  per  cent  and  that  of  the  state  of  Washington 
120  per  cent  between  1900  and  1910,  the  extreme  stress, 
due  to  pioneer  life  and  to  rapid  increase  in  population,  has 
already  abated  in  the  vast  majority  of  places  throughout 
the  West,  which  is  rapidly  becoming  as  stable  as  any  other 
section  of  the  country. 

The  Democratic  Spirit.  —  In  settling  the  West,  everybody 
worked  shoulder  to  shoulder.  There  were  no  privileged 
classes  to  be  excepted  from  the  common  toils  and  priva 
tions.  All  met  on  common  ground,  shared  each  other's 
troubles,  and  assisted  each  other  in  difficult  work.  All 
were  outspoken  and  championed  their  own  opinions  with 
out  restraint.  At  few  times  in  the  history  of  the  civilized 
world  has  the  home  been  a  more  independent  unit.  Never 
have  pioneers  been  more  self-reliant,  more  able  to  cope 
with  difficulties,  more  determined  to  have  their  rights. 

This  democratic  spirit  is  reflected  in  the  works  of  west 
ern  authors.  It  made  Mark  Twain  the  champion  of  the 
weak,  the  impartial  upholder  of  justice  to  the  Maid  of 

1  Roughing  It. 


ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 


343 


Orleans,  to  a  slave,  or  to  a  vivisected  dog.  It  made  him 
join  the  school  of  Cervantes  and  puncture  the  hypocrisy 
of  pretension  in  classes  or  individuals.  The  Clemens 
family  had  believed  in  the  aristocracy  of  slavery,  but  the 
great  democratic  spirit  of  the  West  molded  Mark  Twain 
as  a -growing  boy.  All  the  characters  of  worth  in  the 
great  stories  of  his  young  life  are  democratic.  The  son  of 
the  drunkard,  the  slave  mother,  the  crowds  on  the  steam 
boats,  the  far  western  pioneers,  belong  to  the  great  de 
mocracy  of  man. 

Abraham  Lincoln  owes  his  fame  in  oratory  to  this  dem 
ocratic  spirit,  to  the  feeling  that  prompted  him  to  say, 
"  With  malice  toward  none;  with  charity  for  all."  Bret 
Harte's  world-famous  short  stories  picture  the  rough  min 
ing  camps.  Eugene  Field  is  a  poet  of  that  age  of  univer 
sal  democracy,  the  age  of  childhood.  The  poetry  of  James 
Whitcomb  Riley  is  popular  because  it  speaks  directly  to 
the  common  human  heart. 

Although  the  West  has  already  begun  a  period  of  greater 
repose,  she  has  been  fortunate  to  retain  an  Elizabethan 
enthusiasm  and  interest  in  many-sided  life.  This  quality, 
so  apparent  in  much  of  the  work  discussed  in  this  chapter, 
is  full  of  virile  promise  for  the  future. 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN,  1809-1865 

Migrating  from  his  birthplace  in  Kentucky,  first  to 
Indiana  and  then  to  Illinois,  where  he  helped  to  clear  the 
unbroken  forest,  Abraham  Lincoln  was  one  of  America's 
greatest  pioneers.  Shackled  by  poverty  and  lack  of  edu 
cation,  his  indomitable  will  first  broke  his  own  fetters  and 
then  those  of  the  slave.  History  claims  him  as  her  own, 
but  some  of  the  plain,  sincere,  strong  English  that  fell  from 


344  WESTERN  LITERATURE 

his  lips  while  he  was  making  history  demands  attention  as 
literature.     Passing  by  his   great   debates  with    Douglas 
(1858),  not  because  they  are  unimportant,  but  because  they 
belong  more  to  the  domain  of  politics  and 
history,    we    come    to    his     Gettysburg 
Address  (1863),  which  is  one  of  the 
three  greatest  American  orations. 
In  England,  Oxford  University  dis 
plays  on  its  walls  this  Address  as  a 
model  to  show  students  how  much 
1%   can  be  said  simply  and  effectively 
jj   in  two   hundred   and   sixty-nine 
words.     Edward  Everett,  a  grad- 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  uate  of  Harvard,  called  the  most 

eloquent  man  of  his  time,  also  spoke  at  Gettysburg,  al 
though  few  are  to-day  aware  of  this  fact. 

The  question  may  well  be  asked,  "  How  did  Lincoln, 
who  had  less  than  one  year's  schooling,  learn  the  secret  of 
such  speech  ?  "  The  answer  will  be  found  in  the  fixity  of 
purpose  and  the  indomitable  will  of  the  pioneer.  When 
he  was  a  boy,  he  seemed  to  realize  that  in  order  to  succeed, 
he  must  talk  and  write  plainly.  As  a  lad,  he  used  to 
practice  telling  things  in  such  a  way  that  the  most  igno 
rant  person  could  understand  them.  In  his  youth  he  had 
only  little  scraps  of  paper  or  shingles  on  which  to  write, 
and  so  perforce  learned  the  art  of  brevity.  Only  a  few 
books  were  accessible  to  him,  and  he  read  and  reread  them 
until  they  became  a  part  of  him.  The  volumes  that  he 
thus  absorbed  were  the  Bible,  dBsop's  Fables,  Arabian 
Nights,  Robinson  Crusoe,  The  Pilgrim's  Progress,  Frank 
lin's  Autobiography,  Weems's  Life  of  Washington,  and  two 
or  three  textbooks.  Without  such  good  reading,  which 
served  to  guide  his  practice  in  writing  and  speaking, 


BRET  HARTE  345 

he  could  never  have   been    President.      Later  in   life  he 
read  Shakespeare,  especially  Macbeth. 

Parts  of  his  Second  Inaugural  Address  (1865)  show  even 
better  than  his  Gettysburg  Address  the  influence  of  the 
Bible  on  his  thought  and  style.  One  reason  why  there  is 
so  much  weak  and  ineffective  prose  written  to-day  is  be 
cause  books  like  the  Bible  and  The  Pilgrim  s  Progress  are 
not  read  and  reread  as  much  as  formerly.  Of  the  North 
and  the  South,  he  says  in  his  Second  Inaugural:  — 

"  Both  read  the  same  Bible,  and  pray  to  the  same  God ;  and  each  in 
vokes  his  aid  against  the  other.  It  may  seem  strange  that  any  men 
should  dare  to  ask  a  just  God's  assistance  in  wringing  their  bread  from 
the  sweat  of  other  men's  faces ;  but  let  us  judge  not,  that  we  be  not 
judged.  The  prayers  of  both  could  not  be  answered  —  that  of  neither 
has  been  answered  fully.  .  .  . 

"  With  malice  toward  none  ;  with  charity  for  all ;  with  firmness  in  the 
right,  as  God  gives  us  to  see  the  right,  let  us  strive  on  to  finish  the  work 
we  are  in ;  to  bind  up  the  nation's  wounds.  .  .  ." 

Absolute  sincerity  is  the  most  striking  quality  in  his 
masterpieces.  Simplicity  and  brevity  are  next  in  evidence  ; 
to  these  are  sometimes  added  the  pathos  and  intensity  of  a 
Hebrew  prophet. 

BRET  HARTE,  1839-1902 

Life.  — The  father  of  Bret  Harte  was  professor  of  Greek 
in  the  Albany,  New  York,  Female  College,  where  his  son, 
named  Francis  Bret,  was  born  in  1839.  The  boy  never 
attended  an  institution  of  learning  higher  than  a  common 
school.  Fatherless  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  he  went  with  his 
mother  to  California  in  1854.  Here  he  tried  teaching 
school,  mining,  going  on  stages  as  an  express  messenger, 
printing,  government  service,  and  editing.  Of  his  experi 
ence  in  California,  he  writes  :  - 


346 


WESTERN   LITERATURE 


"  Here  I  was  thrown  among  the  strangest  social  conditions  that  the 
latter-day  world  has  per  haps  seen.  .  .  .  Amid  rushing  waters  and  wild- 
wood  freedom,  an  army  of  strong  men,  in  red  shirts  and  top-boots,  were 
feverishly  in  search  of  the  buried  gold  of  earth.  ...  It  was  a  land  of 
perfect  freedom,  limited  only  by  the  instinct  and  the  habit  of  law  which 
prevailed  in  the  mass.  .  ,  Strong  passions  brought  quick  climaxes, 
all  the  better  and  worse  forces  of  manhood  being  in  unbridled  play.  To 
me  it  was  like  a  strange,  ever-varying  panorama,  so  novel  that  it  was 
difficult  to  grasp  comprehensively.1' 

Amid  such  surroundings 
he  was  educated  for  his 
life  work,  and  his  idealiza 
tion  of  these  experiences 
is  what  entitles  him  to  a 
sure  place  in  American  lit 
erature. 

After  spending  sixteen 
years  in  California,  he  re 
turned  in  1871  to  the  East, 
where  he  wrote  and  lec 
tured;  but  these  subse 
quent  years  are  of  com 
paratively  small  interest  to 
the  student  of  literature. 
In  1878  he  went  as  consul 
to  Crefeld  in  Germany. 
He  was  soon  transferred 
from  there  to  Glasgow, 
Scotland,  the  consulship 
of  which  he  held  until  his  removal  by  President  Cleveland 
in  1885.  These  two  sentences  from  William  Black,  the 
English  novelist,  may  explain  the  presidential  action : 
"Bret  Harte  was  to  have  been  back  from  Paris  last  night, 
but  he  is  a  wandering  comet.  The  only  place  he  is  sure  not 


BRET   HARTE 
(From  a  painting  by  John  Pettie,  R.  A.) 


BRET  HARTE  347 

to  be  found  is  at  the  Glasgow  consulate."  Bret  Harte  was 
something  of  a  lion  in  a  congenial  English  literary  set,  and 
he  never  returned  to  America.  He  continued  to  write  until 
his  death  at  Camberly,  Surrey,  in  1902.  The  tourist  may 
find  his  grave  in  Frimley  churchyard,  England. 

Works.  —  Bret  Harte  was  a  voluminous  writer.  His  au 
thorized  publishers  have  issued  twenty-eight  volumes  of 
his  prose  and  one  volume  of  his  collected  poems.  While 
his  Plain  Language  from  Truthful  James,  known  as  his 
"  Heathen  Chinee "  poem,  was  very  popular,  his  short 
stories  in  prose  are  his  masterpieces.  The  best  of  these 
were  written  before  1871,  when  he  left  California  for  the 
East.  Much  of  his  later  work  was  a  repetition  of  what  he 
had  done  as  well  or  better  in  his  youth. 

The  Overland  Magazine,  a  San  Francisco  periodical, 
which  Bret  Harte  was  editing,  published  in  1868  his  own 
short  story,  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp.  This  is  our  great 
est  short  story  of  pioneer  life.  England  recognized  its 
greatness  as  quickly  as  did  America.  The  first  two  sen 
tences  challenge  our  curiosity,  and  remind  us  of  Poe's 
dictum  concerning  the  writing  of  a  story  (p.  299) :  — 

"  There  was  commotion  in  Roaring  Camp.  It  could  not  have  been  a 
fight,  for  in  1850  that  was  not  novel  enough  to  have  called  together  the 
entire  settlement.1' 

We  at  once  stand  face  to  face  with  the  characters  of  that 
mining  camp.  "The  assemblage  numbered  about  a  hun 
dred  men.  One  or  two  of  these  were  actual  fugitives  from 
justice,  some  were  criminal,  and  all  were  reckless."  We 
shall  remember  "  Kentuck  "  and  Oakhurst  and  "  Stumpy," 
christening  the  baby :  — 

" '  I  proclaim  you  Thomas  Luck,  according  to  the  laws  of  the  United 
States  and  the  State  of  California,  so  help  me  God.'  It  was  the  first 


348  WESTERN   LITERATURE 

time  that  the  name  of  the  Deity  had  been  otherwise  uttered  than  pro 
fanely  in  the  camp." 

There  are  two  sentences  describing  the  situation  of 
Roaring  Camp :  — 

"  The  camp  lay  in  a  triangular  valley  between  two  hills  and  a  river. 
The  only  outlet  was  a  steep  trail  over  the  summit  of  a  hill  that  faced 
the  cabin,  now  illuminated  by  the  rising  moon." 

Poe  would  have  approved  of  the  introduction  of  this  bit  of 
description,  for  it  heightens  the  pathetic  effect  and  focuses 
attention  upon  the  mother.  Even  that  "  steep  trail  "  is  so 
artistically  introduced  that  she 

"...  might  have  seen  it  from  the  rude  bunk  whereon  she  lay,  — 
seen  it  winding  like  a  silver  thread  until  it  was  lost  in  the  stars  above.  . ,  . 
Within  an  hour  she  had  climbed,  as  it  were,  that  rugged  road  that  led 
to  the  stars,  and  so  passed  out  of  Roaring  Camp,  its  sin  and  shame,  for 
ever." 

Bret  Harte  in  a  few  words  relates  how  these  miners  reared 
the  child,  how  they  were  unconsciously  influenced  by  it, 
and  how  one  day  an  expressman  rushed  into  an  adjacent 
village  saying :  — 

"  They've  a  street  up  there  in  '  Roaring,1  that  would  lay  over  any  street 
in  Red  Dog.  They've  got  vines  and  flowers  round  their  houses,  and 
they  wash  themselves  twice  a  day." 

He  had,  as  we  have  seen,  something  of  the  remarkable 
technique  of  which  Poe  was  a  master.  The  influence  of 
Dickens,  especially  his  sentimentalism,  is  often  apparent 
in  Harte's  work.  Some  have  accused  him  of  caricature  or 
exaggeration,  but  these  terms,  when  applied  to  his  best 
work,  signify  little  except  the  use  of  emphasis  and  selec 
tion,  of  which  Homer  and  Shakespeare  freely  availed  them 
selves.  The  author  of  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,  The 
wutcasts  of  Poker  Flat,  and  Tennessee's  Partner  seemed  to 
know  almost  instinctively  what  he  must  emphasize  or 


EUGENE  FIELD 


349 


neglect  in  order  to  give  his  readers  a  vivid  impression  of 
the  California  argonauts.  He  mingles  humor  and  pathos, 
realism  and  idealism,  in  a  masterly  way.  No  other  author 
has  had  the  necessary  dramatic  touch  to  endow  those  times 
with  such  a  powerful  romantic  appeal  to  our  imagination. 
No  one  else  has  rescued  them  from  the  oblivion  which 
usually  overtakes  all  transitory  stages  of  human  develop 
ment. 

Bret  Harte's  pages  afford  us  the  rare  privilege  of  again 
communing  with  genuine  primitive  feeling,  with  eternal 
human  qualities,  not  deflected'  or  warped  by  convention. 
He  gives  us  the  literature  of  democracy.  In  self-forget- 
fulness,  sympathy,  love  for  his  kind,  Tennessee's  partner 
in  his  unkempt  dress  is  the  peer  of  any  wearer  of  the 
broadcloth. 

Bret  Harte's  best  work  is  as  bracing,  as  tonic,  as  instinct 
with  the  spirit  of  vigorous  youth,  as  the  mountain  air  which 
has  never  before  been  breathed.  Woodberry  well  says: 
"  He  created  lasting  pictures  of  human  life,  some  of  which 
have  the  eternal  outline  and  pose  of  a  Theocritean  idyl. 
The  supreme  nature  of  his  gift  is  shown  by  the  fact  that 
he  had  no  rival  and  left  no  successor.  His  work  is  as 
unique  as  that  of  Poe  or  Hawthorne." 1 

EUGENE  FIELD,    1850-1895 

The  Poet  Laureate  of  Children.  —  Eugene  Field  was  born 
in  St.  Louis  in  1850.  fcf  this  western  group  of  authors  he 
was  the  only  member  who  went  to  college.  He  completed 
the  junior  year  at  the  University  of  Missouri,  but  did  not 
graduate.  At  the  age  of  twenty-three  he  began  newspaper 
work  there,  and  he  continued  this  work  in  various  places 

1  Woodberry :  America  in  Literature 


350 


WESTERN   LITERATURE 


until  his  death  in  Chicago  in    1895.     For  the  last  twelve 

years  of  his  life  he  was  connected  with  the  Chicago  Daily 

News. 

He  wrote  many  poems  and  prose  tales,  but  the  work  by 

which  he  will  probably  live  in  literature  is  his  poetry  for 

children.  For  his  title  of 
poet-laureate  of  children, 
he  has  had  few  worthy 
competitors.  His  Little 
Boy  Blue  will  be  read  as 
long  as  there  are  parents 
who  have  lost  a  child. 
"What  a  world  of  little 
people  was  left  unrep 
resented  in  the  realms  of 
poetry  until  Eugene  Field 
came !  "  exclaimed  a  noted 
teacher.  Children  listen 
almost  breathlessly  to  the 
story  of  the  duel  between 
"the  gingham  dog  and  the 

EUGENE   FIELD  .       , 

calico  cat,  and  to  the  bal 
lad  of  "The  Rock-a-By  Lady  from  Hushaby  Street,"  and 
the  dreams  which  she  brings:  — 

"  There  is  one  little  dream  of  a  big  sugar  plum, 
And  lo  !  thick  and  fast  the  other  dreams  come 
Of  popguns  that  bang,  and  tin  tops  that  hum, 
And  a  trumpet  that  bloweth  ! "' 

He  loved  children,  and  any  one  else  who  loves  them, 
whether  old  or  young,  will  enjoy  reading  his  poems  of  child 
hood.  Who,  for  instance,  will  admit  that  he  does  not  like 
the  story  of  Wynken,  Blynken,  and  Nod? 


EUGENE  FIELD  351 

"  Wynken,  Blynken,  and  Nod  one  night 

Sailed  off  in  a  wooden  shoe  — 
Sailed  on  a  river  of  crystal  light, 

Into  a  sea  of  dew. 

1  Where  are  you  going,  and  what  do  you  wish  ?  ' 
The  old  moon  asked  the  three. 
<We  have  come  to  fish  for  the  herring  fish 

That  live  in  this  beautiful  sea ; 
Nets  of  silver  and  gold  have  we  ! ' 
Said  Wynken, 
Blynken, 
And  Nod. 

"The  old  moon  laughed  and  sang  a  song, 

As  they  rocked  in  the  wooden  shoe, 
And  the  wind  that  spec}  them  all  night  long 
Ruffled  the  waves  of  dew." 

Who  does  not  wish  to  complete  this  story  to  find  oat  what 
became  of  the  children  ?     Who  does  not  like  Krinken  ? 

"  Krinken  was  a  little  child,  — 
It  was  summer  when  he  smiled." 

Field  could  write  exquisitely  beautiful  verse.  His  ten 
der  heart  had  felt  the  pathos  of  life,  and  he  knew  how  to  set 
this  pathos  to  music.  He  was  naturally  a  humorist,  and 
his  humor  often  caused  him  to  take  a  right  angle  turn  in 
the  midst  of  serious  thoughts.  Parents  have  for  nearly  a 
quarter  of  a  century  used  the  combination  of  humor  and 
pathos  in  his  poem,  The  Little  Peach,  to  keep  their  children 
from  eating  green  fruit :  — 

"A  little  peach  in  the  orchard  grew, — 
A  little  peach  of  emerald  hue  ; 
Warmed  by  the  sun  and  wet  by  the  dew, 
It  grew. 


352  WESTERN  LITERATURE 

"  John  took  a  bite  and  Sue  a  chew, 
And  then  the  trouble  began  to  brew,  -— 
Trouble  the  doctor  couldn't  subdue. 
Too  true  ! 

"  Under  the  turf  where  the  daisies  grew 
They  planted  John  and  his  sister  Sue, 
And  their  little  souls  to  the  angels  flew,  — 
Boo  hoo  !" 

Time  is  not  likely  to  rob  Eugene  Field  of  the  fame  of 
having  written  The  Canterbury  Tales  of  Childhood. 


JAMES    WHITCOMB    RILEY,    1853-1916 

The  poet  of  our  time  who  has  most  widely  voiced  the 
everyday  feeling  of  democracy,  of  the  man  on  the  farm,  in 

the  workshop,  and  in  his  home 
circle,  is  James  Whitcomb  Riley. 
His  popularity  with  this  genera 
tion  suggests  the  part  which  the 
ballad  makers  played  in  devel 
oping  a  love  for  verse  before 
Shakespeare  came. 

He  was  born  in  the  little 
country  town  of  Greenfield, 
twenty  miles  east  of  Indianapo 
lis.  Like  Bret  Harte  and  Mark 
Twain,  Riley  had  only  a  com 
mon  school  education.  He  be 
came  a  sign  painter,  and  traveled 
widely,  first  painting  advertisements  for  patent  medicines 
and  then  for  the  leading  business  firms  in  the  various  towns 
he  visited.  After  this,  he  did  work  on  newspapers  and  be 
came  a  traveling  lecturer,  and  reader  of  his  own  poems. 
Much  of  his  poetry  charms  us  with  its  presentation  of 


JAMES   WHITCOMB    RILEY 


JAMES   WHITCOMB   RILEY  353 

rural  life.     In   The  Old  Swimmin'-Hole  and  '  Leven  More 
Poems  (1883),  it  is  a  delight  to  accompany  him 

"  When  the  frost  is  on  the  punkin  and  the  fodder's  in  the  shock," 
or  when 

"  The  summer  winds  is  sniffin'  round  the  bloomiV  locus"  trees, 
And  the  clover  in  the  pastur'  is  a  big  day  fer  the  bees," 

or  again,  in  Neighborly  Poems  (1891),  as  he  listens  to  The 
First  Bluebird  singing  with 

"  A  breezy,  treesy,  beesy  hum, 
Too  sweet  fer  anything!" 

We  welcome  him  as  the  champion  of  a  new  democratic 
flower.     In  his  poem,  The  Clover,  he  says:  — 

"  But  what  is  the  lily  and  all  of  the  rest 
Of  the  flowers,  to  a  man  with  a  hart  in  his  brest 
That  was  dipped  brimmin'  full  of  the  honey  and  dew 
Of  the  sweet  clover-blossoms  his  babyhood  knew  ?  " 

Like  Eugene  Field,  Riley  loved  children.  His  Rhymes 
of  Childhood  ( 1 890)  contains  such  favorites  as  The  Raggedy 
Man,  Our  Hired  Girl,  Little  Orphant  Annie,  with  its  be 
witching  warning  about  the  "  Gobble-uns,"  and  the  pa 
thetic  Little  Mahala  Ashcraft. 

But  no  matter  whether  his  verses  take  us  to  the  farm, 
to  the  child,  to  the  inner  circle  of  the  home,  or  to  a 
neighborly  gathering,  their  first  characteristic  is  simplicity. 
Some  of  his  best  verse  entered  the  homes  of  the  common 
people  more  easily  because  it  was  written  in  the  Hoosier 
dialect.  He  is  a  democratic  poet,  and  the  common  people 
listen  to  him.  In  Afterwhiles  (1887),  he  says  :  — 

"  The  tanned  face,  garlanded  with  mirth, 
It  hath  the  kingliest  smile  on  earth  — 
The  swart  brow,  diamonded  with  sweat, 
Hath  never  need  of  coronet." 


354  WESTERN  LITERATURE 

In  like  vein  are  his  lines  from   Griggsbys  Station:  — 
"  Le's  go  a-visitin'  back  to  Griggsby's  Station  — 
Back  where  the  latch  string's  a-hangin'  from  the  door. 
And  ever1  neighbor  'round  the  place  is  dear  as  a  relation  — 
Back  where  we  ust  to  be  so  happy  and  so  pore  ! " 

In  lines  like  the  following  from  Afterwhiies,  there  is  a 
rare  mingling  of  pathos  and  hope  and  kindly  optimism:  — 

"  I  cannot  say,  and  I  will  not  say 

That  he  is  dead.  —  He  is  just  away! 
"  With  a  cheery  smile  and  a  wave  of  the  hand, 

He  has  wandered  into  an  unknown  land, 
"  And  left  us  dreaming  how  very  fair 

It  needs  must  be,  since  he  lingers  there." 

The  charitable  optimism  of  his  lines  :  — 

"  I  would  sing  of  love  that  lives 
On  the  errors  it  forgives," 

has  touched  many  human  hearts. 

Furthermore)  he  has  unusual  humor,  which  is  as 
delightful  and  as  pervasive  as  the  odor  of  his  clover  fields. 
Humor  drives  home  to  us  the  application  of  the  optimistic 
philosophy  in  these  lines  :  — 

"When  a  man's  jest  glad  plum  through, 
God's  pleased  with  him,  same  as  you." 
"  When  God  sorts  out  the  weather  and  sends  rain, 
W'y,  rain's  my  choice." 

In  poems  like  Griggsby '  s  Station  he  shows  his  power  ir. 
making  a  subject  pathetic  and  humorous  at  the  same  time. 
Albert  J.  Beveridge  says  of  Riley,  "  The  aristocrat  may 
make  verses  whose  perfect  art  renders  them  immortal, 
like  Horace,  or  state  high  truths  in  austere  beauty,  like 
Arnold.  But  only  the  brother  of  the  common  man  can 
tell  what  the  common  heart  longs  for  and  feels,  and  only 
he  lives  in  the  understanding  and  affection  of  the  millions." 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS 


355 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS,  1835-1910 

Life  in  the  Mississippi  Valley.  —  The  author  who  is 
known  in  every  village  of  the  United  States  by  the  pen 
name  of  Mark  Twain,  which  is  the  river  phrase  for  two 
fathoms  of  water,  was  born  in  Florida,  Missouri,  in  1835. 
He  says  of  his  birthplace:  "The  village  contained  a  hun 
dred  people,  and  I  increased  the  population  by  one  per 
cent.  It  is  more  than  the  best  man  in  history  ever  did  for 
any  other  town."  When  he  was  two  and  a  half  years  old, 


356  WESTERN  LITERATURE 

the  family  moved  to  Hannibal  on  the  Mississippi,  thirty 
miles  away. 

The  most  impressionable  years  of  his  boyhood  were 
spent  in  Hannibal,  which  he  calls  "a  loafing,  down-at-the- 
heels,  slave-holding  Mississippi  town."  He  attended  only 
a  common  school,  a  picture  of  which  is  given  in  The 
Adventures  of  Tom  Sawyer.  Even  this  schooling  ceased 
at  the  age  of  twelve,  when  his  father  died.  Like  Benjamin 
Franklin  and  W.  D.  Howells,theboy  then  became  a  printer, 
and  followed  this  trade  in  various  places  for  nearly  eight 
years,  traveling  east  as  far  as  the  City  of  New  York.  He  next 
became  a  "  cub,"  or  under  pilot,  on  the  Mississippi  River. 
After  an  eighteen  months'  apprenticeship,  he  was  an  ex 
cellent  pilot,  and  he  received  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars 
a  month  for  his  services.  He  says  of  these  days  :  "  Time 
drifted  smoothly  and  prosperously  on,  and  I  supposed  — 
and  hoped  —  that  I  was  going  to  follow  the  river  the  rest 
of  my  days,  and  die  at  the  wheel  when  my  mission  was 
ended.  But  by  and  by  the  war  came,  commerce  was 
suspended,  my  occupation  was  gone."  For  an  inimitable 
account  of  these  days,  the  first  twenty-one  chapters  of  his 
Life  on  the  Mississippi  (1883)  should  be  read. 

" .  .  .in  that  brief,  sharp  schooling,  I  got  personally  and  familiarly 
acquainted  with  about  all  the  different  types  of  human  nature  that  are 
to  be  found  in  fiction,  biography,  or  history.  The  fact  is  daily  borne  in 
upon  me,  that  the  average  shore  employment  requires  as  much  as  forty 
years  to  equip  a  man  with  this  sort  of  education.  .  .  .  When  I  find 
a  well-drawn  character  in  fiction  or  biography,  I  generally  take  a  warm 
personal  interest  in  him,  for  the  reason  that  I  have  known  him  before  — 
met  him  on  the  river.1' l 

No  other  work  in  American  literature  or  history  can 
take  the  place  of  this  book  and  of  his  three  great  stories 

1  Life  on  the  Afississippi,  Chapter  XVIII. 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS 


357 


(PP-  359-36i),  which  bring  us  face  to  face  with  life  in  the 
great  Mississippi  Valley  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century. 

Life  in  the  Far  West.  —  In  1861  he  went  to  Nevada  as 
private  secretary  to  his  brother,  who  had  been  appointed 
secretary  of  that  territory.  Mark  Twain  intended  to  stay 
there  but  a  short  time.  He  says,  "  I  little  thought  that  I 
would  not  see  the  end  of  that  three-month  pleasure  excur 
sion  for  six  or  seven  uncommonly  long  years." 

The  account  of  his  experiences  in  our  far  West  is  given 
in  the  volume  called  Roughing  It  (1871).  This  book 
should  be  read  as  a  chapter  in  the  early  history  of  that 
section.  The  trip  from  St.  Joseph  to  Nevada  by  stage, 
the  outlaws,  murders,  sagebrush,  jackass  rabbits,  coyotes, 
mining  camps,  —  all  the  varied  life  of  the  time  —  is  thrown 
distinctly  on  the  screen  in  the  pages  of  Roughing  It.  While 
in  the  West,  he  caught  the  mining  fever,  but  he  soon 
became  a  newspaper  reporter  and  editor,  and  in  this 
capacity  he  discovered  the  gold  mine  of  his  genius  as 
a  writer.  The  experience  of  these  years  was  only  sec 
ond  in  importance  to  his  remarkable  life  in  the  Missis 
sippi  Valley.  No  other  American  writer  has  received 
such  a  variety  of  training  in  the  university  of  human 
nature. 

Later  Life.  —  In  1867,  he  supplemented  his  purely  Ameri 
can  training  with  a  trip  to  Europe,  Egypt,  and  the  Holy 
Land.  The  story  of  his  journey  is  given  in  The  Innocents 
Abroad (l%6g\  the  work  which  first  made  him  known  in 
every  part  of  the  United  States.  A  Tramp  Abroad  (\%%o\ 
and  Following  tJie  Equator :  A  Journey  Around  the  World 
(1897),  are  records  of  other  foreign  travels.  While  they 
are  largely  autobiographical,  and  show  in  an  unusually 
entertaining  way  how  he  became  one  of  the  most  cosmo- 


358  WESTERN  LITERATURE 

politan  of  our  authors,  these  works  are  less  important  than 
those  which  throb  with  the  heart  beats  of  that  American 
life  of  which  he  was  a  part  in  his  younger  days. 

In  1884  he  became  a  partner  in  the  publishing  house  of 
Charles  L.  Webster  and  Co.  This  firm  incurred  risks 
against  his  advice,  and  failed.  The  failure  not  only 
swallowed  up  every  cent  that  he  had  saved,  but  left  him, 
past  sixty,  staggering  under  a  load  of  debt  that  would 
have  been  a  despair  to  most  young  men.  Like  Sir  Walter 
Scott  in  a  similar  misfortune,  Mark  Twain  made  it  a 
point  of  honor  to  assume  the  whole  debt.  He  lectured,  he 
wrote,  he  traveled,  till  finally,  unlike  Scott,  he  was  able  to 
pay  off  the  last  penny  of  the  firm's  indebtedness.  His  life 
thus  set  a  standard  of  honor  to  Americans,  which  is  to 
them  a  legacy  the  peer  of  any  left  by  any  author  to  his 
nation. 

After  his  early  pioneer  days,  his  American  homes  were 
chiefly  in  New  England.  For  many  years  he  lived  in  Hart 
ford,  Connecticut.  In  1908  he  went  to  a  new  home  at 
Redding,  Connecticut.  His  last  years  were  saddened  by 
the  death  of  his  daughter  and  his  wife.  His  death  in  1910 
made  plain  the  fact  that  few  American  authors  had  won  a 
more  secure  place  in  the  affections  of  all  classes. 

It  does  not  seem  possible  that  the  life  of  any  other 
American  author  can  ever  closely  resemble  his.  He  had 
Elizabethan  fullness  of  experience.  Even  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh's  life  was  no  more  varied;  for  Mark  Twain  was  a 
printer,  pilot,  soldier,  miner,  newspaper  reporter,  editor. 
Special  correspondent,  traveler  around  the  world,  lecturer, 
biographer,  writer  of  romances,  historian,  publisher,  and 
philosopher. 

Stories  of  the  Mississippi  Valley. —  The  works  by  which 
Mark  Twain  will  probably  be  longest  known  are  those  deal- 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  359 

ing  with  the  scenes  of  his  youth.  He  is  the  historian  of 
an  epoch  that  will  never  return.  His  works  that  reveal 
the  bygone  life  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  are  not  unlikely 
to  increase  in  fame  as  the  years  pass.  He  resembles 
Hawthorne  in  presenting  the  early  history  of  a  section  of 
our  country.  New  England  was  old  when  Hawthorne  was 
a  boy,  and  he  imaginatively  reconstructed  the  life  of  its 
former  days.  When  Mark  Twain  was  young,  the  West 
was  new ;  hence  his  task  in  literature  was  to  preserve  con 
temporary  life.  He  has  accomplished  this  mission  better 
than  any  other  writer  of  the  middle  West. 

The  Adventures  of  Tom  Sawyer  (1876)  is  a  story  of  life 
in  a  Missouri  town  on  the  Mississippi  River.  Tom  Sawyer, 
the  hero,  is  "a  combination,"  says  the  author,  "of  the 
characteristics  of  three  boys  whom  I  knew."  Probably 
Mark  Twain  himself  is  the  largest  part  of  this  combination. 
The  book  is  the  record  of  a  wide-awake  boy's  impression 
of  the  life  of  that  day.  The  wretched  common  school,  the 
pranks  of  the  boys,  the  Sunday  school,  the  preacher  and 
his  sermon,  the  task  of  whitewashing  the  fence,  the  belief 
in  witches  and  charms,  the  half-breed  Indian,  the  drunkard, 
the  murder  scene,  and  the  camp  life  of  the  boys  on  an 
island  in  the  Mississippi,  —  are  all  described  with  a  vivid 
ness  and  interest  due  to  actual  experience.  The  author 
distinctly  says,  "  Most  of  the  adventures  recorded  in  this 
book  really  occurred  ;  one  or  two  were  experiences  of  my 
own,  the  rest  those  of  boys  who  were  schoolmates  of 
mine." 

Huckleberry  Finn  (1885)  has  been  called  the  Odyssey 
of  the  Mississippi.  This  is  a  story  of  life  on  and  along 
the  great  river,  just  before  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Huckleberry  Finn,  the  son  of  a  drunkard,  and 
the  friend  of  Tom  Sawyer,  is  the  hero  of  the  book.  The 


WESTERN  LITERATURE 


reader  becomes  deeply  interested  in  the  fortunes  of  Jim,  a 
runaway  slave,  who  accompanies  Huck  on  a  raft  down  the 
river,  and  who  is  almost  hourly  in  danger  of  being  caught 
and  returned  or  again  enslaved  by  some  chance  white  man. 

One  of  the  strongest 
scenes  in  the  story  is 
where  Huck  debates 
with  himself  whether 
he  shall  write  the  owner 
where  to  capture  Jim, 
or  whether  he  shall  aid 
the  poor  creature  to  se 
cure  his  freedom.  Since 
Huck  was  a  child  of  the 
South,  there  was  no 
doubt  in  his  mind  that 
punishment  in  the  great 
hereafter  awaited  one 
who  deprived  another 
of  his  property,  and  Jim 
was  worth  eight  hun 
dred  dollars.  Huck  did 
not  wish  to  lose  his  soul, 
and  so  he  wrote  a  letter 
to  the  owner.  Before  sending  it,  however,  he,  like  Hamlet, 
argued  the  case  with  himself.  Should  he  send  the  letter  or 
forfeit  human  respect  and  his  soul?  The  conclusion  that 
Huck  reached  is  thoroughly  characteristic  of  Mark  Twain's 
attitude  toward  the  weak.  The  thirty-first  chapter  of  Huckle 
berry  Finn,  in  which  this  incident  occurs,  could  not  have  been 
written  by  one  who  did  not  thoroughly  appreciate  the  way 
in  which  the  South  regarded  those  who  aided  in  the  escape 
of  a  slave.  Another  unique  episode  of  the  story  is  the 


HUCKLEBERRY  FINN 

(From  "  Huckleberry  Finn,"  Copyright,  1884, 
by  Samuel  L.  Clemens.) 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  361 

remarkable  dramatic  description  of  the  deadly  feud  between 
the  families  of  the  Shepherdsons  and  the  Grangerfords. 

This  story  is  Mark  Twain's  masterpiece,  and  it  is  not 
improbable  that  it  will  continue  to  be  read  as  long  as  the 
Mississippi  flows  toward  the  Gulf.  Of  Mark  Twain's 
achievement  in  these  two  tales,  Professor  William  Lyon 
Phelps  of  Yale  says:  "He  has  done  something  which 
many  popular  novelists  have  signally  failed  to  accomplish 
—  he  has  created  real  characters.  His  two  wonderful 
boys,  Tom  Sawyer  and  Huckleberry  Finn,  are  wonderful  in 
quite  different  ways.  The  creator  of  Tom  exhibited  re 
markable  observation ;  the  creator  of  Huck  showed  the  di 
vine  touch  of  imagination.  .  .  .  Tom  Sawyer  and  Huckle 
berry  Finn  are  prose  epics  of  American  life." 

Mark  Twain  says  that  he  was  reared  to  "believe  slavery 
a  divine  institution.  This  fact  makes  his  third  story  of 
western  life,  Pudd'nhead  Wilson,  interesting  for  its  pic 
tures  of  the  negro  and  slavery,  from  a  different  point  of 
view  from  that  taken  by  Mrs.  Stowe  in  Uncle  Toms 
Cabin. 

General  Characteristics.  —  During  his  lifetime,  Mark 
Twain's  humor  was  the  chief  cause  of  his  well-nigh  uni 
versal  popularity.  The  public  had  never  before  read  a 
book  exactly  like  his  Innocents  Abroad.  Speaking  of  an 
Italian  town,  he  says,  "  It  is  well  the  alleys  are  not  wider, 
because  they  hold  as  much  smell  now  as  a  person  can 
stand,  and,  of  course,  if  they  were  wider  they  would  hold 
more,  and  then  the  people  would  die."  Incongruity,  or.the 
association  of  dissimilar  ideas,  is  the  most  frequent  cause 
of  laughter  to  his  readers.  His  famous  cablegram  from 
England  that  the  report  of  his  death  was  much  exaggerated 
is  of  this  order,  as  is  also  the  following  sentence  from 
Roughing  It :  — 


362  WESTERN  LITERATURE 

"  Then  he  rode  over  and  began  to  rebuke  the  stranger  with  a  six- 
shooter,  and  the  stranger  began  to  explain  with  another.1' 

Such  sentences  convey  something  more  than  a  humorous 
impression.  They  surpass  the  usual  historical  records  in 
revealing  in  an  incisive  way  the  social  characteristics  of 
those  pioneer  days.  His  humor  is  often  only  a  means  of 
more  forcibly  impressing  on  readers  some  phase  of  the 
philosophy  of  history.  Even  careless  readers  frequently 
recognize  that  this  statement  is  true  of  much  of  the  humor 
in  A  Connecticut  Yankee  at  King  Arthur's  Court,  which  is 
one  of  his  most  successful  exhibitions  of  humor  based  on 
incongruity. 

While  his  humor  is  sometimes  mechanical,  coarse,  and 
forced,  we  must  not  forget  that  it  also  often  reveals  the 
thoughtful  philosopher.  To  confirm  this  statement,  one 
has  only  to  glance  at  the  humorous  philosophy  that 
constitutes  Puddnhead  Wilson  s  Calendar. 

Mark  Twain's  future  place  in  literature  will  probably  be 
due  less  to  humor  than  to  his  ability  as  a  philosopher  and  a 
historian.  Humor  will  undoubtedly  act  on  his  writings  as 
a  preservative  salt,  but  salt  is  valuable  only  to  preserve 
substantial  things.  If  matter  of  vital  worth  is  not  present 
in  any  written  work,  mere  humor  will  not  keep  it  alive. 

One  of  his  most  humorous  scenes  may  be  found  in  the 
chapter  where  Tom  Sawyer  succeeds  in  getting  other  boys 
to  relieve  him  of  the  drudgery  of  whitewashing  a  fence. 
That  episode  was  introduced  to  enable  the  author  to  make 
more  impressive  his  philosophy  of  a  certain  phase  of 
human  action  :  — 

"  He  had  discovered  a  great  law  of  human  action  without  knowing 
it  —  namely,  that  in  order  to  make  a  man  or  a  boy  covet  a  thing,  it  is 
only  necessary  to  make  the  thing  difficult  to  attain.  If  he  had  been  a 
great  and  wise  uhilosopher,  like  the  writer  of  this  book,  he  would  now 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  363 

have  comprehended  that  Work  consists  of  whatever  a  body  is  obliged 'to 
do,  and  that  Play  consists  of  whatever  a  body  is  not  obliged  to  do." 

His  statement  about  illusions  shows  that  his  philosophy 
does  not  always  have  a  humorous  setting:  — 

"The  illusions  are  the  only  things  that  are  valuable,  and  God  help 
the  man  who  reaches  the  time  when  he  meets  only  the  realities." 

Hatred  of  hypocrisy  is  one  of  his  emphatic  character 
istics.  If  Tom  Sawyer  enjoyed  himself  more  in  watching 
a  dog  play  with  a  pinch-bug  in  church  than  in  listening  to 
a  doctrinal  sermon,  if  he  had  a  better  time  playing  hookey 
than  in  attending  the  execrably  dull  school,  Mark  Twain  is 
eager  to  expose  the  hypocrisy  of  those  who  would  mis 
represent  Tom's  real  attitude  toward  church  and  school. 
While  Mark  Twain  is  determined  to  present  life  faithfully 
as  he  sees  it,  he  dislikes  as  much  as  any  Puritan  to  see  evil 
triumph.  In  his  stories,  wrongdoing  usually  digs  its  own 
grave. 

His  strong  sense  of  justice  led  him  to  write  Personal 
Recollections  of  Joan  of  Arc  (1896),  to  defend  the  Maid  of 
Orleans.  Because  he  loved  to  protect  the  weak,  he  wrote 
A  Dogs  Tale  (1904).  For  the  same  reason  he  paid  all  the 
expenses  of  a  negro  through  an  eastern  college. 

Although  he  was  self-taught,  he  gradually  came  to  use 
the  English  language  with  artistic  effect  and  finish.  His 
style  is  direct  and  energetic,  and  it  shows  his  determina 
tion  to  say  a  thing  as  simply  and  as  effectively  as  possible. 
One  of  the  rules  in  PudcTnhead  Wilson  s  Calendar  is,  "As 
to  the  Adjective :  when  in  doubt,  strike  it  out."  He 
followed  this  rule.  Some  have  complained  that  the  great 
humorist's  mind,  like  Emerson's,  often  worked  in  a  dis 
connected  fashion,  but  this  trait  has  been  exaggerated  in 
the  case  of  both.  Mark  Twain  has  certainly  made  a 
stronger  impression  than  many  authors  whose  "  sixthly " 


364  WESTERN  LITERATURE 

follows  more  inevitably.  It  is  true  that  his  romances  do 
not  gather  up  every  loose  end,  that  they  do  not  close  with 
a  grand  climax  which  settles  everything ;  but  they  reflect 
the  spirit  of  the  western  life,  which  also  had  many  loose 
ends  and  left  much  unsettled. 

His  mingled  humor  and  philosophy,  his  vivid,  interesting, 
contemporary  history,  which  gives  a  broad  and  sympathetic 
delineation  of  important  phases  of  western  life  and  develop 
ment,  fill  a  place  that  American  literature  could  ill  afford 
to  leave  vacant. 

SUMMARY 

Lincoln  spoke  to  the  common  people  in  simple  virile 
English,  which  serves  as  a  model  for  the  students  of  Ox 
ford  University.  Bret  Harte  wrote  stories  filled  with  the 
humor  and  the  pathos  of  the  rough  mining  camps  of  the 
far  West.  Eugene  Field's  simple  songs  appeal  to  all  chil 
dren.  The  virtues  of  humble  homes,  the  smiles  and  tears 
of  everyday  life,  are  presented  in  James  Whitcomb  Riley's 
poems.  Mark  Twain,  philosopher,  reformer  of  the  type  of 
Cervantes,  and  romantic  historian,  has,  largely  by  means 
of  his  humor,  made  a  vivid  impression  on  millions  of 
Americans.  Every  member  of  this  group  had  an  unusual 
development  of  humor.  Each  one  was  imbued  with  the 
democratic  spirit  and  eager  to  present  the  elemental  facts 
of  life.  For  these  reasons,  the  audiences  of  this  group 
have  been  numbered  by  millions. 

REFERENCES 

Roosevelt's  The  Winning  of  the  West. 

Turner's  Rise  of  the  New  West. 

Hart's  National  Ideals  Historically  Traced. 

Johnston's  High  School  History  of  the  United  States  (612  pp.)- 


SUGGESTED   READINGS  365 

Clemens's  Life  on  the  Mississippi. 

Clemens's  Roughing  It. 

Schurz's  Abraham  Lincoln.     (Excellent.) 

Morse's  Abraham  Lincoln. 

Chubb's  Selections  from  the  Addresses,  Inaugurals,  and  Letters  of 
Abraham  Lincoln,  edited  with  an  Introduction  and  Notes.  (Macmillan's 
Pocket  Classics.) 

Boynton's  Bret  Harte. 

Pemberton's  The  Life  of  Bret  Harte. 

Erskine's  Leading  American  Novelists,  pp.  325-379.     (Harte.) 

Canby's  The  Short  Story  in  English,  Chap.  XIV.     (Harte.) 

Field's  The  Ettgene  Field  Book,  edited  by  Burt  and  Cable.  (Con 
tains  autobiographical  matter  and  Field's  best  juvenile  poems  and 
stories.)- 

Thompson's  Eugene  Field,  2  vols. 

Field's  The  Writings  in  Prose  wnd  Verse  of  Eugene  Field,  Sabine 
Edition,  12  vols. 

Garland's  A  Dialogue  between  James  Whitcomb  Riley  and  Hamlin 
Garland,  in  McClure^s  Magazine,  February,  1894. 

In  Honor  of  James  Whitcomb  Riley,  with  a  Brief  Sketch  of  his 
Life,  by  Hughes,  Beveridge,  and  Others,  Indianapolis :  Bobbs-Merrill 
Company,  1906. 

Clemens's  Autobiography. 

Matthews's  Biographical  Criticism  of  Mark  Twain,  in  the  Introduc 
tion  to  The  Innocents  Abroad. 

Phelps's  Essays  on  Modern  Novelists.     (Mark  Twain  ;  excellent.) 

Henderson's  Mark  Twain,  in  Harper's  Magazine,  May,  1909. 

Howells's  My  Mark  Twain. 

SUGGESTED   READINGS 

Lincoln.  —  The  Gettysburg  Address,  part  of  the  Second  Inaugural 
Address. 

Harte.  —  Tennessee^  Partner,  and  How  Santa  Claus  came  to  Simp- 
sorts  Bar.  Harte's  two  greatest  stories,  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp 
and  The  Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat,  should  be  read  in  mature  years.  These 
stories  may  all  be  found  in  the  single  volume,  entitled  The  Luck  of 
Roaring  Camp  i  nd  Other  Stories.  (Riverside  Aldine  Press  Series.) 

Field.  —  Little  Boy  Blue,  The  Duel,  Krinken,  Wynken,  Blynken,  and 


366  WESTERN  LITERATURE 

Nod,  The  Rock-a-By  Lady.  These  poems  may  all  be  found  in  Burt 
and  Cable's  The  Eugene  Field  Book. 

Riley.  —  When  the  Frost  is  on  the  Punkin,  The  Clover,  The  First 
Bluebird,  Ike  Walton's  Prayer,  A  Life  Lesson,  Away,  Griggsby^s  Sta 
tion,  Little  Mahala  Ashcraft,  Our  Hired  Girl,  Little  Orphant  Annie: 
These  poems  may  be  found  in  the  three  volumes,  entitled  Neighborly 
Poems,  Afterivhiles,  and  Rhymes  of  Childhood. 

Mark  Twain.  —  Life  on  the  Mississippi,  Chaps,  VIII. ,  IX.,  XIII. 
Roughing  It,  Chap.  II.  If  the  first  two  chapters  of  The  Adventures 
of  Tom  Sawyer  and  The  Adventures  of  Huckleberry  Finn  are  read,  the 
time  will  probably  be  found  to  finish  the  books.  For  specimens  of  his 
humor  at  its  best,  read  Pudd^nhead  Wilson's  Calendar,  printed  at  the 
beginning  of  the  twenty-one  chapters  of  Pudd^nhead  Wilson.  His 
humor  depending  on  incongruity  is  well  shown  in  A  Connecticut  Yankee 
in  King  Arthurs  Court.  The  Prince  and  the  Pauper  is  a  fascinating 
story  of  sixteenth-century  England. 


QUESTIONS   AND   SUGGESTIONS 

Why  does  Oxford  University  display  on  its  walls  The  Gettysburg 
Address  of  Lincoln  ?  What  books  helped  mold  his  style  ? 

What  period  of  our  development  do  Bret  Harte's  stories  illustrate? 
What  are  some  special  characteristics  of  his  short  stories?  Does  he 
belong  to  the  school  of  Poe  or  Hawthorne  ?  Which  one  of  our  great 
short  story  writers  has  the  most  humor,  —  Irving,  Hawthorne,  Poe,  or 
Harte  ?  Which  one  of  them  do  you  enjoy  the  most  ? 

Why  is  Eugene  Field  called  the  poet-laureate  of  children?  Which 
of  his  poems  indicated  for  reading  do  you  prefer?  What  are  the  most 
striking  qualities  of  his  verse? 

Point  out  the  chief  characteristics  of  Riley's  verse.  What  lines 
please  you  most  for  their  humor,  references  to  rural  life,  optimism, 
kindly  spirit,  and  pathos  ?  Why  is  he  so  widely  popular  ? 

Which  of  Mark  Twain's  works  are  most  valuable  to  the  student  of 
American  literature  and  history?  In  what  sense  is  he  a  historian? 
What  phases  of  western  development  does  he  describe?  Give  instances 
(a)  of  his  humor  which  depends  on  incongruity,  (b}  of  his  philosophical 
humor,  (V)  of  his  hatred  of  hypocrisy,  and  (d}  of  his  solicitude  for  the 
weak.  Why  is  he  said  to  belong  to  the  school  of  Cervantes?  What 
speciallv  impresses  you  about  Mark  Twain's  style? 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  EASTERN  REALISTS 

From  Romanticism  toward  Realism. — The  enormous 
circulation  of.  magazines  in  the  United  States  has  fur 
nished  a  wide  market  for  the  writers  of  fiction.  Magazines 
have  especially  stimulated  the  production  of  short  stories, 
which  show  how  much  technique  their  authors  have 
learned  from  Poe.  The  increased  attention  paid  to  fiction 
has  led  to  a  careful  study  of  its  guiding  principles  and  to 
the  formation  of  new  rules  for  the  practice  of  the  art. 

When  we  look  back  at  the  best  work  of  earlier  writers 
of  American  fiction,  we  shall  find  that  it  is  nearly  all 
romantic.  In  the  eighteenth  century,  Charles  Brockden 
Brown  wrote  in  conformity  to  the  principles  of  early  ro 
manticism,  and  combined  the  elements  of  strangeness  and 
terror  in  his  tales.  The  modified  romanticism  persisting 
through  the  greater  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  de 
manded  that  the  unusual  should  at  least  be  retained  in  fic 
tion  as  a  dominating  factor.  Irving's  Rip  Van  Winkle  has 
the  older  element  of  the  impossible,  and  The  Legend  of 
Sleepy  Hollow  shows  fascinating  combinations  of  the  un 
usual.  Cooper  achieved  his  greatest  success  in  presenting 
the  Indians  and  the  stalwart  figure  of  the  pioneer  against 
the  mysterious  forest  as  a  background.  Hawthorne  occa 
sionally  availed  himself  of  the  older  romantic  materials,  as 
in  The  Snow  Image,  Rappaccini's  Daughter,  and  Young 
Goodman  Brown,  but  he  was  more  often  attracted  by  the 
newer  elements,  the  strange  and  the  unusual,  as  in  The 

.367 


368  THE   EASTERN   REALISTS 

Scarlet  Letter  and  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables.  Poe 
followed  with  a  combination  of  all  the  romantic  materials, 
—  the  supernatural,  the  terrible,  and  the  unusual.  Bret 
Harte  applied  his  magnifying  glass  to  unusual  crises  in 
the  strange  lives  of  the  western  pioneers.  By  a  skillful 
use  of  light  and  shadow,  Mark  Twain  heightened  the  ef 
fect  of  the  strange  scenes  through  which  he  passed  in  his 
young  days.  Almost  all  the  southern  writers,  from  Simms 
to  Cable  and  Harris,  loved  to  throw  strong  lights  on  un 
usual  characters  and  romantic  situations. 

The  question  which  the  romanticists,  or  idealists,  as  they 
were  of  ten  called  in  later  times,  had  accustomed  themselves 
to  ask,  was,  "  Have  these  characters  or  incidents  the  un 
usual  beauty  or  ugliness  or  goodness  necessary  to  make  an 
impression  and  to  hold  the  attention?"  The  masters  of 
the  new  eastern  school  of  fiction  took  a  different  view, 
and  asked,  "  Is  our  matter  absolutely  true  to  life  ?  " 

Realism  in  Fiction.  —  The  two  greatest  representatives 
of  the  new  school  of  realism  in  fiction  are  William  D. 
Howells  and  Henry  James.  Both  have  set  forth  in  special 
essays  the  realist's  art  of  fiction.  The  growing  interest  in 
democracy  was  the  moving  force  in  realism.  In  that  real 
ist's  textbook,  Criticism  and  Fiction  (1891),  Howells  says 
of  the  aristocratic  spirit  in  literature  :  — 

"  It  is  averse  to  the  mass  of  men  ;  it  consents  to  know  them  only  in 
some  conventionalized  and  artificial  guise.  .  .  .  Democracy  in  literature 
is  the  reverse  of  all  this.  It  wishes  to  know  and  to  tell  the  truth,  con 
fident  that  consolation  and  delight  are  there ;  it  does  not  care  to  paint 
the  marvelous  and  impossible  for  the  vulgar  many,  or  to  sentimentalize 
and  falsify  the  actual  for  the  vulgar  few." 

"  Realism  is  nothing  more  and  nothing  less  than  the 
truthful  treatment  of  material,"  says  Howells.  He  some 
times  insists  on  considering  "  honesty  "  and  "  realism  "  as 


FROM   ROMANTICISM  TOWARD   REALISM  369 

synonymous  terms.  His  primary  object  is  not  merely  to 
amuse  by  a  pleasant  story  or  to  startle  by  a  horrible  one. 
His  object  is  to  reflect  life  as  he  finds  it,  not  only  un 
usual  or  exceptional  life.  He  believes  that  it  is  false  to 
real  life  to  overemphasize  certain  facts,  to  overlook  the 
trivial,  and  to  make  all  life  dramatic.  He  says  that  the 
realist  in  fiction  "  cannot  look  upon  human  life  and  declare 
this  thing  or  that  thing  unworthy  of  notice,  any  more 
than  the  scientist  can  declare  a  fact  of  the  material  world 
beneath  the  dignity  of  his  inquiry." 

Howells  recognizes  the  great  importance  of  the  spirit  of 
romanticism,  and  says  that  it  was  at  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century 

"...  making  the  same  fight  against  effete  classicism  which  realism 
is  making  to-day  against  effete  romanticism.  .  .  .  The  romantic  of  that 
day  and  the  real  of  this  are  in  certain  degree  the  same.  Romanticism 
then  sought,  as  realism  seeks  now,  to  widen  the  bounds  of  sympathy,  to 
level  every  barrier  against  aesthetic  freedom,  to  escape  from  the  pa 
ralysis  of  tradition.  It  exhausted  itself  in  this  impulse  ;  and  it  remained 
for  realism  to  assert  that  fidelity  to  experience  and  probability  of  motive 
are  essential  conditions  of  a  great  imaginative  literature." 

Henry  James  in  his  essay,  The  Art  of  Fiction,  denies 
that  the  novelist  is  less  concerned  than  the  historian  about 
the  quest  for  truth.  He  says,  "  The  only  reason  for  the 
existence  of  a  novel  is  that  it  does  compete  with  life. 
When  it  ceases  to  compete  as  the  canvas  of  the  painter 
competes,  it  will  have  arrived  at  a  very  strange  pass."  To 
the  intending  novelist  he  says  :  — 

"  All  life  belongs  to  you,  and  don't  listen  either  to  those  who  would 
shut  you  up  into  corners  of  it  and  tell  you  that  it  is  only  here  and  there 
that  art  inhabits,  or  to  those  who  would  persuade  you  that  this 
heavenly  messenger  wings  her  way  outside  of  life  altogether,  breathing 
a  superfine  air  and  turning  away  her  head  from  the  truth  of  things." 


370  THE  EASTERN  REALISTS 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  Howells  and  James  were 
the  original  founders  of  the  realistic  school,  any  more  than 
Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  their  associates  were  the  orig 
inators  of  the  romantic  school.  History  has  not  yet 
discovered  the  first  realist  or  the  first  romanticist.  Both 
schools  have  from  time  to  time  been  needed  to  hold  each 
other  in  check.  Howells  makes  no  claim  to  being  con 
sidered  the  first  realist.  He  distinctly  says  that  Jane 
Austen  (1775-1817)  had  treated  material  with  entire  truth 
fulness.  Henry  James  might  have  discovered  that  Field 
ing  had  preceded  him  in  writing,  "  It  is  our  business  to 
discharge  the  part  of  a  faithful  historian,  and  to  describe 
human  nature  as  it  is,  not  as  we  would  wish  it  to  be." 

An  occasional  revolt  against  extreme  romanticism  is 
needed  to  bring  literature  closer  to  everyday  life.  The  tend 
ency  of  the  followers  of  any  school  is  to  push  its  conclu 
sions  to  such  ar  extreme  that  reaction  necessarily  sets  in. 
Some  turned  to  seek  for  the  soul  of  reality  in  the  uninter 
esting  commonplace.  Others  learned  from  Shakespeare 
the  necessity  of  looking  at  life  from  the  combined  point  of 
view  of  the  realist  and  the  romanticist,  and  they  discov 
ered  that  the  great  dramatist's  romantic  pictures  some 
times  convey  a  truer  idea  of  life  than  the  most  literal  ones 
of  the  painstaking  realist.  Critics  have  pointed  out  that 
the  original  History  of  Dr.  Faustus  furnished  Marlowe 
with  a  realistic  account  of  Helen  of  Troy's  hair,  eyes, 
"  pleasant  round  face,"  lips,  "  neck,  white  like  a  swan," 
general  figure,  and  purple  velvet  gown,  but  that  his  two 
romantic  lines  :  — 

"  Was  this  the  face  that  launched  a  thousand  ships, 
And  burnt  the  topless  towers  of  Ilium?" 

enable  any  imaginative   person  to  realize  her  fascination 
better  thap  pages  of  realistic  description.     But  we  must 


REALISM  IN  POETRY  371 

not  forget  that  it  was  an  achievement  for  the  writers  of 
this  group  to  insist  that  truth  must  be  the  foundation  for 
all  pictures  of  life,  to  demonstrate  that  even  the  pillars  of 
romanticism  must  rest  on  a  firm  basis  in  a  world  of  reality, 
and  to  teach  the  philosophy  of  realism  to  a  school  of 
younger  writers. 

By  no  means  all  of  the  eastern  fiction,  however,  is 
realistic.  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich  (1836-1907),  for  in 
stance,  wrote  in  a  romantic  vein  The  Story  of  a  Bad  Boyy 
which  ranks  among  the  best  boys'  stories  produced  in  the 
last  half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  There  were  many 
other  writers  of  romantic  fiction,  but  the  majority  of  them 
at  least  felt  the  restraining  influence  of  the  realistic  school. 

Realism  in  Poetry.  —  One  eastern  poet,  Walt  Whitman, 
took  a  step  beyond  any  preceding  American  poet  in  en 
deavoring  to  paint  with  realistic  touches  the  democracy 
of  life.  He  defined  the  poet  as  the  indicator  of  the  path 
between  reality  and  the  soul.  He  thus  proclaims  his  real 
istic  creed  :  — 

"  I  will  not  have  in  my  writing  any  elegance  or  effect  or  originality 
to  hang  in  the  way  between  me  and  the  rest  like  curtains.  I  will  have 
nothing  hang  in  the  way,  not  the  richest  curtains.  What  I  tell  I  tell 
for  precisely  what  it  is.  Let  who  may  exalt  or  startle  or  fascinate  or 
soothe,  I  will  have  purposes  as  health  or  heat  or  snow  has  and  be  as 
regardless  of  observation.  You  shall  stand  by  my  side  and  look  in  the 
mirror  with  me." 

The  subject  of  his  verse  is  the  realities  of  democracy. 
No  other  great  American  poet  had  indulged  in  realism  as 
extreme  as  this  :  — 
"  The  butcher-boy  puts  off  his  killing-clothes,  or  sharpens  his  knife  at 

the  stall  in  the  market, 
I  loiter  enjoying  his  repartee  and  his  shuffle  and  break-down." 

Whitman  says  boldly  :  — 

"  And  the  cow  crunching  with  depress'd  head  surpasses  any  statue." 


372 


THE  EASTERN  REALISTS 


He  discarded  ordinary  poetic  meter,  because  it  seemed 
to  lack  the  rhythm  of  nature.  It  is,  however,  very  easy 
for  a  poet  to  cross  the  line  between  realism  and  idealism, 
and  we  sometimes  find  adherents  of  the  two  schools  disa 
greeing  whether  Whitman  was  more  realist  or  idealist  in 
some  of  his  work,  for  instance,  in  a  line  or  verse  unit,  like 
this,  when  he  says  :  — 

"That  the  hands  of 
the  sisters  Death  and 
Night  incessantly 
softly  wash  again,  and 
ever  again,  this  soiled 
world." 

The  fact  that  not 
all  the  later  eastern 
poets  were  realistic 
needs  emphasis. 
Thomas  Bailey 
Aldrich,  perhaps 
the  most  noted  suc 
cessor  of  New  Eng 
land's  famous  group, 
was  frequently  an 
exquisite  romantic  artist,  or  painter  in  miniature,  as  these 
eight  lines  which  constitute  the  whole  of  his  poem,  Identity^ 
show :  — 

"  Somewhere  —  in  desolate  wind-swept  space  — 
In  Twilight-land  —  in  No-man's-land  — 
Two  hurrying  Shapes  met  face  to  face, 
And  bade  each  other  stand. 

u  l  And  who  are  you  ? '  cried  one,  agape, 
Shuddering  in  the  gloaming  light. 
'  I  know  not,'  said  the  second  Shape, 
<I  only  died  last  night!'" 


IDENTITY 
(Drawing  by  Elihu  Vedder) 


WILLIAM   DEAN  HOWELLS 


373 


WILLIAM   DEAN    HOWELLS,   1837-1920 

The  foremost  leader  of  realism  in  modern  American 
fiction,  the  man  who  influenced  more  young  writers 
than  any  other  novelist  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  nine 
teenth  century,  was  William  Dean  Howells,  who  was  born 
in  Martin's  Ferry,  Ohio, 
in  1837.  He  never  went 
to  college,  but  obtained 
valuable  training  as  a 
printer  and  editor  in  va 
rious  newspaper  offices 
in  Ohio.  He  was  for 
many  years  editor  of  the 
Atlantic  MontJily  and  an 
editorial  contributor  to 
the  New  York  Nation  and 
Harper  s  Magazine.  In 
these  capacities,  as  well 
as  by  his  fiction,  he 
reached  a  wide  public. 
Later  he  turned  his  at 
tention  mainly  to  the 
writing  of  novels.  So 

many  of  their  scenes  are  laid  in  New  England  that  he  is 
often  claimed  as  a  New  England  writer. 

His  strongest  novels  are  A  Modern  Instance  (1882),  The 
Rise  of  Silas  Lapham  (1885),  The  Minister's  Charge  ( 1 886), 
Indian  Summer  (1886),  and  A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes 
(1889).  These  belong  to  the  middle  period  of  his  career. 
Before  this,  his  mastery  of  character  portrayal  had  not 
culminated,  and  later,  his  power  of  artistic  selection  and 
repression  was  not  so  strictly  exercised. 


WILLIAM    DEAN    HOWELLS 


374  THE  EASTERN  REALISTS 

The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham  is  a  story  of  the  home  life 
and  business  career  of  a  self-made  merchant,  who  has 
the  customary  braggadocio  and  lack  of  culture,  but  who 
possesses  a  substantial  integrity  at  the  root  of  his  nature. 
The  little  shortcomings  in  social  polish,  so  keenly  felt  by 
his  wife  and  daughters,  as  they  rise  to  a  position  due  to 
great  wealth,  the  small  questions  of  decorum,  and  the  de 
tails  of  business  take  up  a  large  part  of  the  reader's  atten 
tion  ;  but  they  are  treated  with  such  ease,  naturalness, 
repressed  humor,  refinement  of  art,  and  truth  in  sketching 
provincial  types  of  character,  that  the  story  is  a  triumph 
of  realistic  creation.  A  Modern  Instance  is  not  so  pleasant 
a  book,  but  the  attention  is  firmly  held  by  the  strong,  real 
istic  presentation  of  the  jealousy,  the  boredom,  the  tempta 
tions,  and  the  dishonesty  exhibited  in  a  household  of  a 
commonplace,  ill-mated  pair.  Indian  Summer  begins  well, 
proceeds  well,  and  ends  well.  It  may  be  a  trifle  more 
conventional  than  the  two  other  novels  just  mentioned,  but 
it  is  altogether  delightful.  The  conversations  display  keen 
insight  into  the  heart  of  the  young,  imaginative  girl  and  of 
the  older  woman  and  man.  The  Minister's  Charge  is  thor 
oughly  individual.  The  young  boy  seems  so  close  to  his 
readers  that  every  detail  in  his  life  becomes  important. 
The  other  peop.e  are  also  full  of  real  blood,  while  the 
background  is  skillfully  arranged  to  heighten  the  effect  of 
the  characters.  A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes  would  be 
decidedly  improved  if  many  pages  were  omitted,  but  it  is 
full  of  lifelike  characters,  and  it  sometimes  approaches 
the  dramatic,  in  a  way  unusual  with  Howells. 

In  his  effort  to  present  life  without  any  misleading  ideas 
of  heroism,  beauty,  or  idyllic  sweetness,  Howells  some 
times  goes  so  far  toward  the  opposite  extreme  as  to  write 
stories  that  seem  to  be  filled  with  commonplace  women, 


WILLIAM  DEAN  HO  WELLS  375 

humdrum  lives,  and  men  like  North  wick  in  The  Quality 
of  Mercy,  of  whom  one  of  the  characters  says  :  — 

"  He  was  a  mere  creature  of  circumstances  like  the  rest  of  us!  His 
environment  made  him  rich,  and  his  environment  made  him  a  rogue. 
Sometimes  I  think  there  was  nothing  to  Northwick  except  what  hap 
pened  to  him." 

But  in  such  work  as  the  five  novels  enumerated,  Howells 
shows  decided  ability  in  portraying  attractive  characters, 
in  making  their  faults  human  and  as  interesting  as  their 
virtues,  in  causing  ordinary  life  to  yield  variety  of  incident 
and  amusing  scenes,  and,  finally,  in  engaging  his  characters 
in  homelike,  natural,  self-revealing  conversations,  which 
are  often  spiced  with  wit. 

Howells  does  not  always  have  a  plot,  that  is,  a  begin 
ning,  a  climax,  and  a  solution  of  all  the  questions  suggested. 
He  has,  of  course,  a  story,  but  he  does  not  find  it  necessary 
to  present  the  entire  life  of  his  characters,  if  he  can  accu 
rately  portray  them  by  one  or  more  incidents.  After  that 
purpose  is  accomplished,  the  story  often  ceases  before  the 
reader  feels  that  a  real  ending  has  been  reached. 

Howells  rarely  startles  or  thrills ;  he  usually  both  in 
terests  and  convinces  his  readers  by  a  straightforward 
presentation  of  everyday,  well-known  scenes  and  people. 
The  strongest  point  in  his  art  is  the  easy,  natural  way  in 
which  he  seems  to  be  retailing  faithfully  the  facts  exactly 
as  they  happened,  without  any  juggling  or  rearranging  on 
his  part.  His  characters  are  so  clearly  presented  that  they 
do  not  remain  in  dreary  outline,  but  emerge  fully  in  rounded 
form,  as  moving,  speaking,  feeling  beings.  His  keen  in 
sight  into  human  frailties,  his  delicate,  pervading  humor, 
his  skill  in  handling  conversations,  and  his  delightfully  clear, 
easy,  natural,  and  familiar  style  made  him  a  realist  of 
high  rank  and  a  worthy  teacher  of  young  writers. 


376 


THE   EASTERN   REALISTS 


HENRY  JAMES,   1843-1916 

The  name  most  closely  associated  with  Howells  is  that  of 
Henry  James,  who  was  born  in  New  York.  William  James 

(1842-1910)  the  noted 
psychologist,  was  an 
older  brother.  Henry 
James  is  called  an  "in 
ternational  novelist "  be 
cause  he  lived  mostly 
abroad  and  laid  the 
scenes  of  his  novels  in 
both  Europe  and  Amer 
ica.  His  sympathy  with 
England  in  the  Euro 
pean  war  caused  him  to 
become  a  British  sub 
ject  in  1915,  eight 
months  before  his  death 
in  1916. 

Like  Howells,  James  was  a  leader  in  modern  realistic 
fiction.  His  work  has  been  called  the  "  quintessence  of 
realism."  But  instead  of  selecting,  as  Howells  does,  the 
well-known  types  of  the  average  people,  James  prefers  to 
study  the  ordinary  mind  in  extraordinary  situations,  sur 
roundings,  and  combinations.  For  this  reason,  his  char 
acters,  while  realistically  presented,  rarely  seem  well-known 
and  obvious  types. 

James  was  the  first  American  to  succeed  in  the  realistic 
short  story,  that  is,  the  story  stripped  of  the  supernatural 
and  romantic  elements  used  by  Hawthorne  and  Poe.  James 
selects  neither  a  commonplace  nor  a  dramatic  situation,  but 
chooses  some  difficult  and  out-of-the-way  theme,  and  clears 


HENRY   JAMES 


HENRY  JAMES  377 

it  up  with  his  keen,  subtle,  impressionistic  art.  A  Pas 
sionate  Pilgrim,  The  Madonna  of  the  Future,  and  The 
Lesson  of  the  Master  are  short  stories  that  show  his 
abstruse,  unusual  subject  matter  and  his  analytical  methods. 

He  was  a  very  prolific  writer.  He  published  as  many 
as  three  volumes  in  twelve  months.  Year  after  year,  with 
few  exceptions,  he  brought  out  either  a  novel,  a  book  of 
essays,  or  a  volume  of  short  stories.  His  most  interesting 
novels  are  Roderick  Hudson  (1875),  Daisy  Miller:  A  Study 
(1878),  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady  (1881),  and  The  Princess 
Casamassima  (1886). 

Daisy  Miller  is  a  brilliant  study  of  the  Italian  experiences 
of  an  American  girl  of  the  unconventionally  independent 
type.  She  is  beautiful,  frank,  original,  but  whimsical, 
shallow,  and  headstrong.  One  minute  she  attracts,  the 
next  moment  she  repels.  One  feels  baffled  and  provoked, 
but  is  held  to  the  book  by  the  spell  of  a  writer  who  is  clever, 
intellectual,  a  master  of  style,  and  a  skilled  scientist  in  dis 
secting  human  character.  In  Roderick  Hudson  and  The 
Portrait  of  a  Lady,  the  characters  are  much  more  interest 
ing,  the  situations  are  larger,  the  human  emotion  deeper, 
and  the  books  richer  from  every  point  of  view.  These  novels 
also  show  Americans  in  European  surroundings.  Isabel 
Archer  and  Ralph  Touchet  in  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady  have 
qualities  that  deeply  stir  the  admiration  and  emotions. 
Every  scene  in  which  these  characters  appear  adds  to  the 
pleasure  in  being  able  to  know  and  love  them,  even  though 
they  are  merely  characters  in  a  book. 

Only  a  few  such  persons  as  these,  so  rich  in  the  qualities 
of  the  heart,  appear  in  James's  novels.  He  has  portrayed 
a  greater  variety  of  men  and  women  than  any  other  American 
writer,  but  they  usually  interest  him  for  some  other  quality 
than  their  power  to  love  and  suffer.  He  is  tempted  to 


378  THE  EASTERN  REALISTS 

regard  life  from  the  intellectual  viewpoint,  as  a  problem,  a 
game,  and  a  panorama.  He  does  not,  like  Hawthorne, 
enter  into  the  sanctuary  and  become  the  hero,  laying  the 
lash  of  remorse  upon  his  back.  James  stands  off,  a  dis 
interested  onlooker,  and  exhibits  his  characters  critically, 
accurately,  minutely,  as  they  take  their  parts  in  the  pro 
cession  or  game.  Brilliant  and  faultless  as  the  portraits 
are,  they  too  frequently  appear  cold,  pitiless  renditions  of 
life,  often  of  life  too  trivial  to  seem  worthy  the  searching 
study  that  he  gives  it.  Ralph  Touchet,  Roderick  Hudson, 
Isabel  Archer,  and  Miss  Light  are  sufficient  to  prove  the 
tremendous  power  possessed  by  James  to  present  the 
emotional  side  of  life.  Both  in  theory  and  practice,  how 
ever,  he  usually  prefers  to  remain  the  disinterested,  im 
partial,  detached  spectator. 

Like  Howells,  James  does  not  depend  upon  a  plot. 
There  is  little  action  in  his  works.  The  interest  is  psycho 
logical,  and  a  chance  word,  an  encounter  on  the  street, 
even  a  look,  may  serve  to  change  an  attitude  of  mind  and 
affect  the  outcome. 

The  popular  impression  that  James  is  impossible  to 
understand  and  that  he  uses  words  to  obscure  his  meaning 
is,  of  course,  false,  although  in  his  later  novels  his  style  is 
extremely  involved  and  often  difficult  to  follow.  In  such 
works  as  The  Wings  of  a  Dove  (1902)  aad  The  Golden 
Bowl  (1904),  for  example,  there  are  long  and  intricate  psy 
chological  explanations,  which  are  most  abstruse  and  con 
fusing.  It  is  this  later  work  which  has  given  rise  to  the 
common  saying  that  William  James  wrote  psychology  like 
a  novelist,  and  Henry  James,  novels  like  a  psychologist. 

Judged  by  his  best  work,  however,  such  as  The  Portrait 
of  a  Lady  and  Roderick  Hudson,  Henry  James  must  be 
acknowledged  a  master  of  English  style.  His  keen  ana- 


MARY  E.   WILKINS   FREEMAN 


379 


lytical  mind  is  reflected  in  a  brilliant,  highly  polished>  and 
impressively  incisive  style.  In  a  few  perfectly  selected 
words  the  subtlest  thoughts  are  clearly  revealed.  In  these 
masterpieces,  the  reader  is  constantly  delighted  by  the 
artist's  skill,  which  leads  ever  deeper  into  human  motives 
after  it  would  seem  that  the  heart  and  mind  could  disclose 
no  further  secrets.  Such  skill  shows  a  mastery  of  language 
rarely  surpassed  in  fiction.  At  his  best,  James  has  a  fine 
ness  and  sureness  of  touch,  and  a  command  of  perfectly 
fitting  words,  as  well  as  elegance  and  grace  in  style. 

MARY  E.  WILKINS  FREEMAN,  1862- 

Mary  Eleanor  Wilkins  (Mrs.  Freeman),  known  for  her 
realistic  stories  of  the  provincial  New  Englander,  was  born 
in  Randolph,  Massachu 
setts.  With  humor  to  see 
the  little  eccentricities  of 
the  people  among  whom 
she  lived  and  a  sympa 
thetic  understanding  of 
their  heroic  qualities,  she 
has  created  real  men  and 
women,  —  farmers,  school 
teachers,  prim  spinsters, 
clergymen,  stern  Roman 
matrons,  —  all  unmistaka 
ble  types  of  New  England 
village  life.  Her  unfailing 
ability  to  transplant  the 
reader  into  rock-ribbed, 
snow-clad  New  England, 
with  its  many  fond  as-  MARY  E.  WILKINS  FREEMAN 

sociations  for  most  Americans,  is  proof  of   her  power  as 


380  THE  EASTERN  REALISTS 

an  artist.  Her  art  is  subtle,  and  it  commands  both  attention 
and  admiration,  as  she  reveals  every  slight  move  in  a  simple 
plot  and  with  extraordinary  deftness  of  touch  brings  out 
the  most  delicate  shadings  that  differentiate  her  characters. 

Her  style  is  easy  and  clear,  and  is  pervaded  by  a  fine 
sense  of  humor.  Her  short  stories  are  her  most  artistic 
work,  especially  those  in  the  two  volumes,  A  New  England 
Nun,  and  Silence  and  Other  Tales  ;  but  she  can  also  tell  a 
long  story  well,  as  is  shown  in  Pembroke,  which  combines 
at  their  best  all  her  qualities  as  a  novelist. 

She  is  distinctly  a  realist  of  Howells's  school,  presenting 
the  daily  rounds  of  the  life  which  she  knew  intimately,  and 
making  complete  stories  of  such  meager  material  as  the 
subterfuges  which  two  poor  but  proud  sisters  practiced  in 
order  to  make  one  black  silk  dress,  owned  in  partnership, 
appear  as  if  each  really  possessed  "a  gala  dress."  She 
takes  stolid,  practical  characters,  who  have  seemingly  noth 
ing  attractive  in  their  composition,  and  by  her  sympathetic 
treatment  causes  them  to  appeal  strongly  to  human  hearts. 
She  discovers  heroic  qualities  in  apparently  commonplace 
homes  and  families,  and  finds  humorous  or  pathetic  possi 
bilities  in  men  and  women  whom  most  writers  would  con 
sider  very  unpromising.  Miss  Wilkins  knows  that  in  rural 
New  England  romantic  things  do  happen,  tragedies  do 
occur,  and  heroes  and  heroines  do  appear  in  unexpected 
quarters  to  meet  emergencies,  and  she  occasionally  trans 
fers  such  events  to  her  pages,  thereby  enlivening  them 
without  sacrificing  the  reality  of  her  pictures.  But  the 
triumph  of  her  art  consists  in  her  facile  handling  of  simple 
incidents  and  everyday  men  and  women  and  her  power  to 
carry  them  without  a  hint  of  sentimentality  to  a  natural, 
artistic,  effective  climax,  heightened  usually  by  a  touch  of 
either  humor  or  pathos. 


WALT  WHITMAN 


381 


WALT  WHITMAN,  1819-1892 

Life.  — Suffolk  County,  Long  Island,  in  which  is  situated 
the  village  of  West  Hills,  where  Walt  Whitman  was  born 
in  1819,  was  in  some  ways  the  most  remarkable  eastern 
county  in  the  United  States.  Hemmed  in  on  a  narrow 
strip  of  land  by  the  ocean  on  one  side  and  Long  Island 
Sound  on  the  other,  the  inhabitants  saw  little  of  the  world 
unless  they  led  a  seafaring  life.  Many  of  the  well-to-do 
farmers,  as  late  as  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
never  took  a  land  journey  of  more  than  twenty  miles  from 
home.  Because  of  such  restricted  environment,  the  people 


382  THE   EASTERN  REALISTS 

of  Suffolk  County  were  rather  insular  in  early  days,  yet 
the  average  grade  of  intelligence  was  high,  for  some  of 
England's  most  progressive  blood  had  settled  there  in  the 
first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

Nowhere  else  in  this  country,  not  even  at  the  West,  was 
there  a  greater  feeling  of  independence  and  a  more  c@m- 
plete  exercise  of  individuality.  There  was  a  certainty 
about  life  and  opinions,  a  feeling  of  relationship  with  every 
body,  a  defiance  of  convention,  that  made  Suffolk  County 
the  fit  birthplace  of  a  man  who  was  destined  to  trample 
poetic  conventions  under  his  feet  and  to  sing  the  song  of 
democracy.  In  Walt  Whitman's  young  days,  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men  on  Long  Island  met  familiarly  on  equal 
terms.  The  farmer,  the  blacksmith,  the  carpenter,  the 
mason,  the  woodchopper,  the  sailor,  the  clergyman,  the 
teacher,  the  young  college  student  home  on  his  vacation, 
—  all  mingled  as  naturally  as  members  of  a  family.  No 
human  being  felt  himself  inferior  to  any  one  else,  so  long 
as  the  moral  proprieties  were  observed.  Nowhere  else  did 
there  exist  a  more  perfect  democracy  of  conscious  equals. 
Although  Whitman's  family  moved  to  Brooklyn  before  he 
was  five  years  old,  he  returned  to  visit  relatives,  and  later 
taught  school  at  various  places  on  Long  Island  and  edited 
a  paper  at  Huntington,  near  his  birthplace.  In  various 
ways  Suffolk  County  was  responsible  for  the  most  vital 
part  of  his  early  training.  In  his  poem,  There  Was  a  Child 
Went  Forth,  he  tells  how  nature  educated  him  in  his  island 
home.  In  his  prose  work,  Specimen  Days  and  Collect, 
which  all  who  are  interested  in  his  autobiography  should 
read,  he  says,  "The  successive  growth  stages  of  my  in 
fancy,  childhood,  youth,  and  manhood  were  all  pass'd  on 
Long  Island,  which  I  sometimes  feel  as  if  I  had  incor 
porated.  " 


WALT   WHITMAN 


Like  Mark  Twain,  Walt  Whitman  received  from  the 
schools  only  a  common  education  but  from  life  he  had 
an  uncommon  training.  His  chief  education  came  from 
associating  with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  people.  In 
Brooklyn  he  worked  as  a  printer,  carpenter,  and  editor. 
His  closest  friends  were  the  pilots  and  deck  hands  of  ferry 
boats,  the  drivers  of  New  York  City  omnibuses,  factory 
hands,  and  sailors.  After  he  had  become  well  known,  he 
was  unconventional  enough  to  sit  with  a  street  car  driver 
in  front  of  a  grocery  store  in  a  crowded  city  and  eat  a 
watermelon.  When  people 
smiled,  he  said,  "They  can 
have  the  laugh  —  we  have 
the  melon." 

His  Suffolk  County  life 
might  have  left  him  demo 
cratic  but  insular;  but  he 
traveled  widely  and  gained 
cosmopolitan  experience. 
In  1848  he  went  leisurely 
to  New  Orleans,  where  he 
edited  a  newspaper,  but  in 
a  short  time  he  journeyed 
north  along  the  Mississippi, 
traveled  in  Canada,  and 
finally  returned  to  New 
York,  having  completed  a 
trip  of  eight  thousand  miles. 

After  his  return,  he  seems  to  have  worked  with  his 
father  in  Brooklyn  for  about  three  years,  building  and 
selling  houses.  He  was  then  also  engaged  on  a  collection  of 
poems,  which,  in  1855,  he  published  under  the  title  of  Leaver 
of  Grass.  From  this  time  he  was  known  as  an  author. 


WHITMAN   AT  THE  AGE   OF  THIRTY-SIX 


384  THE  EASTERN  REALISTS 

In  1862  he  went  South  to  nurse  his  brother,  who  was 
wounded  in  the  Civil  War.  For  nearly  three  years,  the 
poet  served  as  a  volunteer  nurse  in  the  army  hospitals  in 
Washington  and  its  vicinity.  Few  good  Samaritans  have 
performed  better  service.  He  estimated  that  he  attended 
on  the  field  and  in  the  hospital  eighty  thousand  of  the  sick 
and  wounded.  In  after  days  many  a  soldier  testified  that 
his  recovery  was  aided  by  Whitman's  kindly  ministrations. 
Finally,  however,  his  own  iron  constitution  gave  way  under 
this  strain. 

When  the  war  closed,  he  was  given  a  government  clerk 
ship  in  Washington,  but  was  dismissed  in  1865,  because  of 
hostility  aroused  by  his  Leaves  of  Grass.  He  soon  re 
ceived  another  appointment,  however,  which  he  held  until 
1873,  when  a  stroke  of  paralysis  forced  him  to  relinquish 
his  position.  He  went  to  Camden,  New  Jersey,  where  he 
lived  the  life  of  a  semi-invalid  during  the  rest  of  his  exist 
ence,  writing  as  his  health  would  permit.  He  died  in 
1892,  and  was  buried  in  Harleigh  Cemetery,  near  Camden. 

Poetry.  —  Whitman  gave  to  the  world  in  1855  the  first 
edition  of  the  poems,  which  he  called  Leaves  of  Grass. 
His  favorite  expression,  "words  simple  as  grass,"  and  his 
line :  — 

"  I  believe  a  leaf  of  grass  is  no  less  than  the  journey-work  of  the  stars," 

give  a  clue  to  the  idea  which  prompted  the  choice  of  such 
an  unusual  title.  He  continued  to  add  to  these  poems 
during  the  rest  of  his  life,  and  he  published  in  1892  the 
tenth  edition  of  Leaves  of  Grass,  in  a  volume  containing 
four  hundred  and  twenty-two  closely  printed  octavo  pages. 
Whitman  intended  Leaves  of  Grass  to  be  a  realistic  epic 
of  American  democracy.  He  tried  to  sing  this  song  as  he 
heard  it  echoed  in  the  life  of  man  and  man's  companion, 


WALT  WHITMAN  385 

Nature.  While  many  of  Whitman's  poems  have  the  most 
dissimilar  titles,  and  record  experiences  as  unlike  as  his 
early  life  on  Long  Island,  his  dressing  of  wounds  during  the 
Civil  War,  his  comradeship  with  the  democratic  mass,  his 
almost  Homeric  communion  with  the  sea,  and  his  memories 
of  Lincoln,  yet  according  to  his  scheme,  all  of  this  verse 
was  necessary  to  constitute  a  complete  song  of  democracy. 
His  poem,  /  Hear  America  Singing,  shows  the  variety 
that  he  wished  to  give  to  his  democratic  songs :  — 

"  I  hear  America  singing,  the  varied  carols  I  hear, 

Those  of  mechanics,  each  one  singing  his  as  it  should  be  blithe  and 

strong, 

The  carpenter  singing  his  as  he  measures  his  plank  or  beam, 
The  mason  singing  his  as  he  makes  ready  for  work,  or  leaves  off  work, 
The  boatman  singing  what  belongs  to  him  in  his  boat,  the  deckhand 

singing  on  the  steamboat  deck, 
The  shoemaker  singing  as  he  sits  on  his  bench,  the  hatter  singing  as 

he  stands, 
The  woodcutter's  song,  the  ploughboy's  on  his  way  in  the  morning,  or 

at  noon  intermission  or  at  sundown, 
The  delicious  singing  of  the  mother,  or  of  the  young  wife  at  work,  or  of 

the  girl  sewing  or  washing, 
Each  singing  what  belongs  to  him  or  her  and  to  none  else." 

His  ambition  was  to  put  human  life  in  America  "freely, 
fully,  and  truly  on  record." 

His  longest  and  one  of  his  most  typical  poems  in  this 
collection  is  called  Song  of  Myself  ,  in  which  he  paints  him 
self  as  a  representative  member  of  the  democratic  mass. 
He  says  :  — 

"  Agonies  are  one  of  my  changes  of  garments, 

I  do  not  ask  the  wounded  person  how  he  feels,  I  myself  become  the 

wounded  person, 
My  hurts  turn  livid  upon  me  as  I  lean  on  a  cane  and  observe. 


386  THE   EASTERN  REALISTS 

Not  a  youngster  is  taken  for  larceny  but  I  go  up  too,  and  am  tried  and 
sentenced." 

In  these  four  lines,  he  states  simply  what  must  be  the 
moving  impulse  of  a  democratic  government  if  it  is  to  sur 
vive.  Here  is  the  spirit  that  is  to-day  growing  among  us, 
the  spirit  that  forbids  child  labor,  cares  for  orphans,  enacts 
model  tenement  laws,  strives  to  regenerate  the  slum  dis 
tricts,  and  is  increasing  the  altruistic  activities  of  clubs  and 
churches  throughout  the  country.  But  these  verses  will 
not  submit'  to  iambic  or  trochaic  scansion,  and  their  form 
is  as  strange  as  a  democratic  government  was  a  century 
and  a  half  ago  to  the  monarchies  of  Europe.  Place  these 
lines  beside  the  following  couplet  from  Pope :  — 

"  Self-love  and  Reason  to  one  end  aspire, 
Pain  their  aversion,  Pleasure  their  desire." 

Here  the  scansion  is  regular,  the  verse  polished,  the  thought 
undemocratic.  The  world  had  long  been  used  to  such 
regular  poetry.  The  form  of  Whitman's  verse  came  as  a 
distinct  shock  to  the  majority. 

Sometimes  what  he  said  was  a  greater  shock,  as,  for  in 
stance,  the  line :  — 

"  I  sound  my  barbaric  yawp  over  the  roofs  of  the  world." 

For  a  considerable  time  many  people  knew  Whitman  by 
this  one  line  alone.  They  concluded  that  he  was  a  barba 
rian  and  that  all  that  he  said  v/as  "  yawp."  Although  much 
of  his  work  certainly  deserved  this  characterization,  yet 
those  who  persisted  in  reading  him  soon  discovered  that 
their  condemnation  was  too  sweeping,  as  most  were  willing 
to  admit  after  they  had  read,  for  instance,  When  Lilacs 
Last  in  the  Dooryard  Bloom'd,  a  poem  that  Swinburne 
called  "  the  most  sonorous  nocturn  yet  chanted  in  the 


WALT  WHITMAN  387 

church  of  the  world."     The  three  motifs  of  this  song  are 
the  lilac,  the  evening  star,  and  the  hermit  thrush  :  — 

"  Lilac  and  star  and  bird  twined  with  the  chant  of  my  soul, 
There  in  the  fragrant  pines  and  the  cedars  dusk  and  dim." 

In  the  same  class  we  may  place  such  poems  as  Out  of 
the  Cradle  Endlessly  Rocking,  where  we  listen  to  a  song  as 
if  from 

u  Out  of  the  mocking-bird's  throat,  the  musical  shuttle." 
Whitman  also  wrote  in  almost  regular  meter  his  dirge  on 
Lincoln,  the  greatest  dirge  of  the  Civil  War :  — 

"  O  Captain  !  my  Captain  !  our  fearful  trip  is  done, 
The  ship  has  weathered  every  rack,  the  prize  we  sought  is  won, 
The  port  is  near,  the  bells  I  hear,  the  people  all  exulting." 

In  1888  Whitman  wrote  that  "  from  a  worldly  and  busi 
ness  point  of  view,  Leaves  of  Grass  has  been  worse  than 
a  failure  —  that  public  criticism  on  the  book  and  myself 
as  author  of  it  yet  shows  mark'd  anger  and  contempt 
more  than  anything  else."  But  he  says  that  he  had 
comfort  in  "  a  small  band  of  the  dearest  friends  and  up 
holders  ever  vouchsafed  to  man  or  cause."  He  was  also 
well  received  in  England.  He  met  with  cordial  apprecia 
tion  from  Tennyson.  John  Addington  Sy monds  ( 1 840- 
1893),  a  graduate  of  Oxford  and  an  authority  on  Greek 
poetry  and  the  Renaissance,  wrote,  "  Leaves  '  of  Grass, 
which  I  first  read  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  influenced 
me  more,  perhaps,  than  any  other  book  has  done  except 
the  Bible ;  more  than  Plato,  more  than  Goethe."  Had 
Whitman  lived  until  1908,  he  would  probably  have  been 
satisfied  with  the  following  statement  from  his  biographer, 
Bliss  Perry,  formerly  professor  of  English  at  Princeton, 
"  These  primal  and  ultimate  things  Whitman  felt  as  few 
men  have  ever  felt  them,  and  he  expressed  them,  at  his 


388  THE  EASTERN   REALISTS 

best,  with  a  nobility  and  beauty  such  as  only  the  world's 
very  greatest  poets  have  surpassed." 

General  Characteristics.  —  His  most  pronounced   single 
characteristic  is  his  presentation  of  democracy  :  — 

"  Stuff 'd  with  the  stuff  that  is  coarse  and  stuff 'd  with  the  stuff  that  is 
fine." 

He  said  emphatically,  ''Without  yielding  an  inch,  the 
working  man  and  working  woman  were  to  be  in  my  pages 
from  first  to  last."  He  is  the  only  American  poet  of  his 
rank  who  remained  through  life  the  close  companion  of 
day  laborers.  Yet,  although  he  is  the  poet  of  democracy, 
his  poetry  is  too  difficult  to  be  read  by  the  masses,  who 
are  for  the  most  part  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  he  is  their 
greatest  representative  poet. 

He  not  only  preached  democracy,  but  he  also  showed  in 
practical  ways  his  intense  feeling  of  comradeship  and  his 
sympathy  with  all.     One  of  his  favorite  verses  was 
"  And  whoever  walks  a  furlong  without  sympathy  walks  to  his  own 

funeral  drest  in  his  shroud." 

His  Civil  War  experiences  still  further  intensified  this 
feeling.  He  looked  on  the  lifeless  face  of  a  son  of  the 
South,  and  wrote  :  — 

"...  my  enemy  is  dead,  a  man  divine  as  myself  is  dead." 

Like  Thoreau,  Whitman  welcomed  the  return  to  nature. 

He  says :  — 

"  I  am  enamour'd  of  growing  out-doors, 
Of  men  that  live  among  cattle  or  taste  of  the  ocean  or  woods." 

He  is  the  poet  of  nature  as  well  as  of  man.  He  tells  us 
how  nature  educated  him  :  — 

"  The  early  lilacs  became  part  of  this  child, 
And  grass  and  white  and  red  morning-glories,  and  white  and  red 

clover,  and  the  song  of  the  phoebe-bird, 
And  the  Third-month  lambs  and  the  sow's  pink-faint  litter,  and  the 

mare's  foal  and  the  cow's  calf." 


WALT  WHITMAN  389 

He  delights  us 

"...  with  meadows,  rippling  tides  and  trees  and  flowers  and  grass, 
And  the  low  hum  of  living  breeze  —  and  in  the  midst  God's  beautiful 
eternal  right  hand." 

No  American  poet  was  more  fond  of  the  ocean.  Its 
aspect  and  music,  more  than  any  other  object  of  nature, 
influenced  his  verse.  He  addresses  the  sea  in  lines  like 
these : — 

"With  husky-haughty  lips,O  sea! 
Where  day  and  night  I  wend  thy  surf-beat  shore, 
Imaging  to  my  sense  thy  varied  strange  suggestions, 
(I  see  and  plainly  list  thy  talk  and  conference  here,) 
Thy  troops  of  white-maned  racers  pacing  to  the  goal, 
Thy  ample,  smiling  face,  dash'd  with  the  sparkling  dimples  of  the 
sun." 

He  especially  loves  motion  in  nature.  His  poetry 
abounds  in  the  so-called  motor  images.1  He  takes  pleas 
ure  in  picturing  a  scene 

"  Where   the   heifers  browse,   where  geese  nip  their  food  with  short 
jerks," 

or  in  watching 

"  The  white  arms  out  in  the  breakers  tirelessly  tossing." 

While  his  verse  is  fortunately  not  without  idealistic 
touches,  his  poetic  theory  is  uncompromisingly  realistic, 
as  may  be  seen  in  his  critical  prose  essays,  some  of  which 
deserve  to  rank  only  a  little  below  those  of  Lowell  and 
Poe.  Whitman  says  :  — 

"  For  grounds  for  Leaves  of  Grass,  as  a  poem,  I  abandon'd  the  con 
ventional  themes,  which  do  not  appear  in  it  :  none  of  the  stock  orna 
mentation,  or  choice  plots  of  love  or  war,  or  high  exceptional  personages 

1  For  a  discussion  of  the  various  types  of  images  of  the  different  poets, 
see  the  author's  Education  of  the  Central  Nervous  System,  Chaps.  VII., 
VIII.,  IX.,  X. 


3QO  THE   EASTERN   REALISTS 

ot  Old-World  song;   nothing,  as  I   may  say,  for  beauty's  sake  —no 
legend  or  myth  or  romance,  nor  euphemism,  nor  rhyme." 

His  unbalanced  desire  for  realism  Jed  him  into  two 
mistakes.  In  the  first  place,  his  determination  to  avoid 
ornamentation  often  caused  him  to  insert  in  his  poems 
mere  catalogues  of  names,  which  are  not  bound  together 
by  a  particle  of  poetic  cement.  The  following  from  his 
Song  of  Myself  is  an  instance  :  — 

"  Land  of  coal  and  iron  !  land  of  gold!  land  of  cotton,  sugar,  rice! 
Land  of  wheat,  beef,  pork!  land  of  wool  and  hemp!  land  of  the  apple 
and  the  grape ! " 

In  the  second  place,  he  thought  that  genuine  realism 
torbade  his  being  selective  and  commanded  him  to  put 
everything  in  his  verse.  He  accordingly  included  some 
offensive  material  which  was  outside  the  pale  of  poetic  treat 
ment.  Had  he  followed  the  same  rule  with  his  cooking, 
his  chickens  would  have  been  served  to  him  without  re 
moving  the  feathers.  His  refusal  to  eliminate  unpoetic 
material  from  his  verse  has  cost  him  very  many  readers. 

He  further  concluded  that  it  was  unfitting  for  a  demo 
cratic  poet  to  be  hampered  by  the  verse  forms  of  the  Old 
World.  He  discarded  rhyme  almost  entirely,  but  he  did 
employ  rhythm,  which  is  determined  by  the  tone  of  the 
ideas,  not  by  the  number  of  syllables.  This  rhythm  is 
often  not  evident  in  a  single  line,  but  usually  becomes 
manifest  as  the  thought  is  developed.  His  verse  was 
intended  to  be  read  aloud  or  chanted.  He  himself  says 
that  his  verse  construction  is  "  apparently  lawless  at  first 
perusal,  although  on  closer  examination  a  certain  regular 
ity  appears,  like  the  recurrence  of  lesser  and  larger  waves 
on  the  seashore,  rolling  in  without  intermission,  and  fitfully 
rising  and  falling."  There  is  little  doubt  that  he  carried 
in  his  ear  the  music  of  the  waves  and  endeavored  to  make 


WALT   WHITMAN  391 

his  verse  in  some  measure  conform  to  that.  He  says 
specifically  that  while  he  was  listening  to  the  call  of  a 
seabird 

"...  on  Paumanok's l  gray  beach, 

With  the  thousand  responsive  songs  at  random, 

My  own  songs  awaked  from  that  hour, 

And  with  them  the  key,  the  word  up  from  the  waves." 

In  ideals  he  is  most  like  Emerson.  Critics  have  called 
Whitman  a  concrete  translation  of  Emerson,  and  have 
noticed  that  he  practiced  the  independence  which  Emer 
son  preached  in  the  famous  lecture  on  The  American 
ScJiolar($.  185).  In  1855  Emerson  wrote  to  Whitman  :  "I 
am  not  blind  to  the  worth  of  the  wonderful  gift  of  Leaves 
of  Grass.  I  find  it  the  most  extraordinary  piece  of  wit 
and  wisdom  that  America  has  yet  contributed." 

Whitman  is  America's  strangest  compound  of  unfiltered 
realism,  alloyed  with  rich  veins  of  noble  idealism.  No  stu 
dents  of  American  democracy,  its  ideals  and  social  spirit, 
can  afford  to  leave  him  unread.  He  sings,  "  un warped  by 
any  influence  save  democracy," 

"  Of  Life,  immense  in  passion,  pulse,  and  power, 
Cheerful,  for  freest  action  fornVd  under  the  laws  divine." 

Intelligent  sympathy  with  the  humblest,  the  power  to  see 
himself  "  in  prison  shaped  like  another  man  and  feel  the 
dull  unintermitted  pain,"  prompts  him  to  exclaim  :  — 

"I  seize  the  descending  man  and  raise  him  with  resistless  will.'1 

An  elemental  poet  of  democracy,  embodying  its  faults  as 
well  as  its  virtues,  Whitman  is  noteworthy  for  voicing  the 
new  social  spirit  on  which  the  twentieth  century  is  relying 
for  the  regeneration  of  the  masses. 

1  The  Indian  name  for  Long  Island. 


3Q2  THE  EASTERN  REALISTS 


SUMMARY 

American  fiction  had  for  the  most  part  been  romantic 
from  its  beginning  until  the  last  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Charles  Brockden  Brown,  Irving,  Cooper,  Haw 
thorne,  Poe,  Bret  Harte,  and  Mark  Twain  were  all  tinged 
with  romanticism.  In  the  latter  part  of  the  last  century, 
there  arose  a  school  of  realists  who  insisted  that  life  should 
be  painted  as  it  is,  without  any  addition  to  or  subtraction 
from  reality.  This  school  did  not  ask,  "  Is  the  matter  in 
teresting  or  exciting  ?  "  but,  "  Is  it  true  to  life?  " 

Howells  and  James  were  the  leaders  of  the  realists. 
Howells  uses  everyday  incidents  and  conversations. 
James  not  infrequently  takes  unusual  situations,  so  long 
as  they  conform  to  reality,  and  subjects  them  to  the  most 
searching  psychological  analysis.  Mary  Wilkins  Freeman, 
a  pupil  of  Howells,  shows  exceptional  skill  in  depicting 
with  realistic  interest  the  humble  life  of  provincial  New 
England.  While  this  school  did  not  turn  all  writers  into 
extreme  realists,  its  influence  was  felt  on  the  mass  of 
contemporary  fiction. 

Walt  Whitman  brings  excessive  realism  into  the  form 
and  matter  of  verse.  For  fear  of  using  stock  poetic  orna 
ments,  he  sometimes  introduces  mere  catalogues  of  names, 
uninvested  with  a  single  poetic  touch.  He  is  America's 
greatest  poet  of  democracy.  His  work  is  characterized  by 
altruism,  by  all-embracing  sympathy,  by  emphasis  on  the 
social  side  of  democracy,  and  by  love  of  nature  and 
the  sea- 

REFERENCES 

Stanton's  A  Manual  of  American  Literature. 
Alden's  Magazine  Writing  and  the  New  Literature. 


SUGGESTED   READINGS  393 

Perry's  A  Study  of  Prose  Fiction,   Chap.  IX.,  Realism. 

Howells's  Criticism  and  Fiction. 

Burt  and  Howells's  The  Howells  Story  Book.  (Contains  biographical 
matter. ) 

Henry  James's  The  Art  of  Fiction. 

Phelps's  William  Dean  Howells,  in  Essays  on  Modern  Novelists. 

BrownelPs  Henry  James,  in  American  Prose  Masters. 

Canby's  The  Short  Story  in  English.     (James.) 

Whitman's  Leaves  of  Grass  (1897),  446  pp.  (Contains  all  of  his 
poems,  the  publication  of  which  was  authorized  by  himself.) 

Triggs's  Selections  from  the  Prose  and  Poetry  of  Walt  Whitman. 
(The  best  for  general  readers.) 

Perry's  Walt  Whitman,  his  Life,  and  Work.    (Excellent.) 

G.  R.  Carpenter's  Walt  Whitman. 

Platt's  Walt  Whitman.    (Beacon  Biographies.} 

Noyes's  An  Approach  to  Walt  Whitman.   (Excellent.) 

Bucke's  Walt  Whitman.    (A  biography  by  one  of  his  executors.) 

In  Re  Walt  Whitman,  edited  by  his  literary  executors.  (Supplements 
Bucke.) 

Burroughs's  Whitman  :  A  Study. 

Symonds's  Walt  Whitman  :  A  Study. 

Dowden's  The  Poetry  of  Democracy,  m(  Studies  in  Literature. 

Stevenson's  Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and  Books.     (Whitman.) 

Whitman's  Works,  edited  by  Triggs.  (Putnam  Subscription  Edition.) 
Vol.  X.  contains  a  bibliography  and  reference  list  of  98  pp. 

SUGGESTED   READINGS 

The  Prose  Realists.  —  Sections  II.,  XV.,  and  XXVIII.,  from 
Howells's  Criticism  and  Fiction.  Silas  Lapham  is  the  best  of  his 
novels.  Those  who  desire  to  read  more  should  consult  the  list  on 
p.  373  of  this  book. 

In  Henry  James,  read  either  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady  or  Roderick 
Hudson.  A  Passionate  Pilgrim,  and  The  Madonna  of  the  Future  are 
two  of  his  best  short  stories. 

Read  any  or  all  of  these  short  stories  by  Mary  Wilkins  Free 
man  :  A  New  England  Nim,  A  Gala  Dress,  in  the  volume,  A  New 
England  Nun  and  Other  Stories,  Evelina's  Garden,  in  the  volume, 
Silence  and  Other  Stories.  Her  best  long  novel  is  Pembroke. 

Walt  Whitman.  —  While  the  majority  of  his  poems  shculd  be  left 


394  THE  EASTERN  REALISTS 

for  mature  years,  the  following,  carefully  edited  by  Triggs  in  his  volume 
of  Selections,  need  not  be  deferred :  — 

Song  of  Myself,  Triggs,  pp.  105-120.  (Begin  with  the  line  on 
p.  105,  «  A  child  said,  What  is  the  Grass  /"),  Out  of  the  Cradle  End 
lessly  Rocking,  pp.  154-160,  /  Hear  America  Singing,  p.  100,  Recon 
ciliation,  p.  175,  O  Captain!  My  Captain,  p.  184,  When  Lilacs  Last  in 
the  Dooryard  Bloom1  d,  pp.  176-184,  Patrolling  Barnegat,  p.  163,  With 
Husky-Haughty  Lips,  O  Seal  p.  232. 

Selections  from  his  prose,  including  Specimen  Days,  Memoranda  of 
the  War,  and  his  theories  of  art  and  poetry,  may  be  found  in  Triggs, 
PP-  3-95- 


QUESTIONS   AND   SUGGESTIONS 

The  Prose  Realists.  —  To  what  school  did  the  best  writers  in  Ameri 
can  fiction  belong,  prior  to  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  ? 
What  was  the  subject  of  each  ?  What  is  the  realistic  theory  advanced 
by  Howells  ?  In  what  respects  does  this  differ  from  the  practice  of  the 
romantic  school  ? 

Take  any  chapter  of  Silas  Lapham  and  of  either  The  Portrait  of  a 
Lady,  or  of  Roderick  Hudson,  and  show  how  Howells  and  James  differ 
from  the  romanticists.  What  difference  do  you  notice  in  the  realistic 
method  and  in  the  style  of  Howells  and  of  James  ? 

What  special  qualities  characterize  the  work  of  Mary  Wilkins  Free 
man  ?  What  is  the  secret  of  her  success  in  so  employing  a  little  real 
istic  incident  as  to  hold  the  reader's  attention  ?  Compare  the  two 
short  stories,  The  Madonna  of  the  Future  (James)  and  A  New  Eng 
land  Nun  (Wilkins  Freeman)  and  show  how  James's  interest  lies  in  the 
subtle  psychological  problem,  while  Mrs.  Freeman's  depends  on  the 
unfolding  of  simple  emotions.  It  will  also  be  found  interesting  to  com 
pare  the  method  of  that  early  English  realist  Jane  Austen,  e.g.  in  her 
novel  Emma,  with  the  work  of  the  American  realists. 

In  general,  do  you  think  that  the  romantic  or  the  realistic  school 
has  the  truer  conception  of  the  mission  and  art  of  fiction  ?  Why  is  it 
desirable  that  each  school  should  hold  the  other  in  check  ? 

Walt  Whitman.  —  How  did  his  early  life  prepare  him  to  be  the  poet 
of  democracy  ?  To  what  voices  does  he  specially  listen  in  his  poem,  / 
Hear  America  Singing  ?  In  his  Song  of  Myself,  point  out  some  pas 
sages  that  show  the  modern  spirit  of  altruism.  In  Out  of  the  Cradle 


QUESTIONS  AND  SUGGESTIONS  395 

Endlessly  Rocking,  what  lines  best  show  his  lyric  gift  ?  What  individual 
objects  stand  out  most  strongly  and  poetically  ?  Could  this  poem  have 
been  written  by  one  reared  in  the  middle  West  ?  Why  does  he  select 
the  lilacs,  evening  star,  and  hermit  thrush,  as  the  motifs  of  the  poem, 
When  Lilacs  Last  in  the  Door  yard  Bloomed?  In  Patrolling  Barnegat, 
do  you  notice  any  resemblance  to  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  of  the  sea,  e.g. 
to  Beowulf  or  The  Seafarer?  In  With  Husky-Haughty  Lips,  O  Sea! 
what  touches  are  unlike  those  of  Anglo-Saxon  poets  ?  (See  the  author's 
History  of  English  Literature,  pp.  21,  25,  33,  35,  37.)  Which  of 
Whitman's  references  to  nature  do  you  consider  the  most  poetic  ?  How 
does  O  Captain  !  My  Captain  !  differ  in  form  from  the  other  poems  in 
dicated  for  reading  ?  What  qualities  in  his  verse  impress  you  most  ? 


A  GLANCE  BACKWARD 

Lack  of  originality  is  a  frequent  charge  against  young 
literatures,  but  the  best  foreign  critics  have  testified  to  the 
originality  of  the  Knickerbocker  Legend,  of  Leatherstock- 
ing,  of  the  great  Puritan  romances,  in  which  the  Ten  Com 
mandments  are  the  supreme  law,  of  the  work  of  that 
southern  wizard  who  has  taught  a  great  part  of  the  world 
the  art  of  the  modern  short  story  and  who  has  charmed  the 
ear  of  death  with  his  melodies,  of  America's  unique  humor, 
so  conspicuous  in  the  service  of  reform  and  in  rendering 
the  New  World  philosophy  doubly  impressive. 

American  literature  has  not  only  produced  original  work, 
but  it  has  also  delivered  a  worthy  message  to  humanity. 
Franklin  has  voiced  an  unsurpassed  philosophy  of  the 
practical.  Emerson  is  a  great  apostle  of  the  ideal,  an  un 
excelled  preacher  of  New  World  self-reliance.  His  teach 
ings,  which  have  become  almost  as  widely  diffused  as  the 
air  we  breathe,  have  added  a  cubit  to  the  stature  of  unnum 
bered  pupils.  We  still  respond  to  the  half  Celtic,  half 
Saxon,  song  of  one  of  these  :  — 

"  Luck  hates  the  slow  and  loves  the  bold, 
Soon  come  the  darkness  and  the  cold." 

American  poets  and  prose  writers  have  disclosed  the 
glory  of  a  new  companionship  with  nature  and  have 
shown  how  we, 

"...  pocketless  of  a  dime  may  purchase  the  pick  of  the  earth." 

After  association  with  them,  we  also  feel  like  exclaim 
ing  :  — 

396 


A  GLANCE   BACKWARD  397 

u  Earth  of  the  vitreous  pour  of  the  full  moon  just  tinged  with  blue! 
.  .  .  rich  apple-blossom'd  earth ! 
Smile,  for  your  lover  comes." 

No  other  literature  has  so  forcibly  expressed  such  an 
inspiring  belief  in  individuality,  the  aim  to  have  each  hu 
man  being  realize  that  this  plastic  world  expects  to  find  in 
him  an  individual  hero.  Emerson  emphasized  "the  new 
importance  given  to  the  single  person."  No  philosophy 
of  individuality  could  be  more  explicit  than  Walt  Whit 
man's: — 

"  The  whole  theory  of  the  universe  is  directed  unerringly  to  one  single 
individual,  —  namely  to  You." 

This  emphasis  on  individuality  is  an  added  incentive  to 
try  "  to  yield  that  particular  fruit  which  each  was  created 
to  bear."  We  feel  that  the  universe  is  our  property  and 
that  we  shall  not  stop  until  we  have  a  clear  title  to  that 
part  which  we  desire.  As  we  study  this  literature,  the 
moral  greatness  of  the  race  seems  to  course  afresh  through 
our  veins,  and  our  individual  strength  becomes  the  strength 
of  ten. 

No  other  nation  could  have  sung  America's  song  of 
democracy  :  — 

"  Stuff'd  with  the  stuff  that  is  coarse  and  stufPd  with  the  stuff  that  is 
fine." 

The  East  and  the  West  have  vied  in  singing  the  song  of 
a  new  social  democracy,  in  holding  up  as  an  ideal  a 

"...  love  that  lives 
On  the  errors  it  forgives," 

in  teaching  each  mother  to  sing  to  her  child  :  — 

"  Thou  art  one  with  the  world  —  though  I  love  thee  the  best. 
And  to  save  thee  from  pain,  I  must  save  all  the  rest. 


398  A   GLANCE  BACKWARD 

Thou  wilt  weep ;  and  thy  mother  must  dry 

The  tears  of  the  world,  lest  her  darling  should  cry." 

True  poets,  like  the  great  physicians,  minister  to  life  by 
awakening  faith.  The  singers  of  New  England  have 
made  us  feel  that  the  Divine  Presence  stands  behind  the 
darkest  shadow,  that  the  feeble  hands  groping  blindly  in 
the  darkness  will  touch  God's  strengthening  right  hand. 
Amid  the  snows  of  his  Northland,  Whittier  wrote  :  — 

"  I  know  not  where  his  islands  lift 
Their  fronded  palms  in  air; 
I  only  know  I  cannot  drift 
Beyond  his  love  and  care." 

Lanier  calls  from  the  southern  marshes,  fringed  with  the 
live  oaks  "  and  woven  shades  of  the  vine  "  :  — 
"  I  will  fly  in  the  greatness  of  God  as  the  marsh-hen  flies 
In  the  freedom  that  fills  all  the  space  'twixt  the  marsh  and  the  skies  : 
By  so  many  roots  as  the  marsh-grass  sends  in  the  sod 
I  will  heartily  lay  me  a-hold  on  the  greatness  of  God." 

The  impressive  moral  lesson  taught  by  American  litera 
ture  is  a  presence  not  to  be  put  by.  Lowell's  utterance  is 
typical  of  our  greatest  authors  :  — 

"  Not  failure,  but  low  aim,  is  crime." 

Hawthorne  wrote  his  great  masterpiece  to   express   this 
central  truth :  — 

"To  the  untrue  man,  the  whole  universe  is  false,  —  it  is  impalpable, — 
it  shrinks  to  nothing  within  his  grasp." 

Finally,  American  literature  has  striven  to  impress  the 
truth  voiced  in  these  lines  :  — 

"  As  children  of  the  Infinite  Soul 
Our  Birthright  is  the  boundless  whole.  .  .  . 

"  High  truths  which  have  not  yet  been  dreamed, 
Realities  of  all  that  seemed.  .  .  . 

"  No  fate  can  rob  the  earnest  soul 
Of  his  great  Birthright  in  the  boundless  whole ! " 


INDEX 


Abbott,  Jacob,  399. 

Adams,  Henry,  399. 

Adams,  John,  73,  75,  101. 

Adams,  John  Quincy,  147. 

Adams,  Samuel,  74,  75,  102,  105,  106. 

Addison,  Joseph,  55,  83,  98,  114,  121,  123, 

124,  149,  152. 

Alcott,  Amos  Bronson,  159,  160,  164,  209. 
>  Alcott,  Louisa  May,  160,  399. 

Aldrich,  Thomas  Bailey,  330,  371,  372. 
Alhambra,  115,  120.  ; 

Allen,  James  Lane, 

life  and  works  of,  328-330,  336. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  340.    <• 

references  on,  336,  337,  338,  339. 

suggested  readings  in,  338,  339. 
Allston,  Washington,  399. 
Alsop,  George,  414. 

American  Note  Books,  166,  167,  207,  208. 
American  Scholar,  The,  185,  186. 
Ames,  Fisher,  399. 
Amsterdam,  New,  117,  118. 
Annabel  Lee,  297,  302. 
Arber,  Edwin,  19,  20. 
Armada,  Spanish,  15. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  274,  285. 
7  Atherton,  Gertrude  Franklin,  418. 
Atlantic  Monthly,  248,  251,  263. 
Audubon,  John  J.,  414. 
Austen,  Jane,  370,  394. 
Austin,  Jane  G.,  399. 
Autobiography,  Franklin's,  76-79. 
Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table,  The,  262, 

263,  264,  265. 
Azarias,  Brother  (Mullany,  P.  F.),  416. 

Bacheller,  Irving,  399. 

Bacon,  Nathaniel,  22,  59. 

Baldwin.  James,  418. 

Bancroft,  George,  400. 

Bangs,  John  Kendrick,  400. 

Barlow,  Joel,  93,  94,  103,  105,  106. 

Barr,  Amelia  E.,  400. 

Bates,  Arlo,  400. 

Bay  Psalm  Book,  37,  38. 

Bedott,  Widow,  412. 

Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  169,  400. 

Berkeley,  Sir  William,  25. 

Beveridge,  Albert  J.,  354. 

Beverley,  Robert,  23,  59. 


Bible,  The,  136,  235,  345. 

Bierce,  Ambrose,  418. 

Biglow    Papers,  247,  249,    250,  251,  252, 

264,  275. 
"Billings,  Josh"  (Shaw,  Henry  Wheeler), 

409. 

Blithedale  Romance,  219. 
Boker,  George  H.,  400. 
Bradford,    William,    26-28,    60,    61,    62, 

64. 

•Bradstreet,  Anne,  39-41,  59,  61,  63,  258. 
Breitmann,  Hans  (Leland,  C.  G.),  409. 
Bridge,  Horatio,  206,  209. 
Brook  Farm,  165-167,  169,  207,  219,  278. 
Brooks,  Phillips,  400. 
Brown,  Alice,  401. 

Brown,  Charles  Brockden,  86, 88, 89-92, 99r 

103,  104,  105,  106,  125,  299,  367,  392. 

Browne,   Charles  F.   ("Artemus    Ward")r 

401. 
Browning,  Robert,  274. 

Whittier's  comment  on,  275. 
Brownson,  Orestes  A.,  401. 
Bryant,  William  Cullen,  99,  108,  135-145, 
149,  150,  151,  152,  231,  253. 

betrothal  prayer  of,  138. 

compared  with  Wordsworth,  143,  144, 
145. 

general  characteristics  of,  143-145. 

life  of,  135-140. 

Lowell  on,  253. 

moral  qualities  of,  136,  137,  143,  145. 

poetry  of,  139,  140-145. 

Puritan  training  of,  136. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  152. 

references  on,  151. 

suggested  readings  in,  152. 

translates  Homer,  140. 
Bunner,  Henry  Cuyler,  401. 
Bunyan,  John,  10,  55,  83. 
Burdette,  Robert  Jones,  418. 
Burke,  Edmund,  98. 
Burnett,  Frances  Hodgson,  414. 
Burnham,  Clara  Louise,  418. 
Burns,  Robert,  25,  99,  235,  243,  244,  27fl» 
Burroughs,  John,  401. 
Burwell  Papers,  22. 
Butler,  Samuel,  96. 
Byrd,  William,  23,  26,  59. 
Byron,  Lord,  145,  289. 


423 


424 


INDEX 


•Cable,  George  Washington,  336,  368. 

life  and  works  of,  325-328. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  340. 

references  on,  336,  337,  338. 

suggested  readings  in,  338. 
Calhoun,  John  C.,  176,  414. 
Calvin,  John,  34. 
Cambridge  University,  16. 
Carleton,  Will,  418. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  43,  162,  183,  192,  274. 
>Cary,  Alice  and  Phoebe,  401. 
'     Catherwood,  Mary  Hartwell,  418. 
Cawein,  Madison  J.,  292,  335. 

life  and  works  of,  332-334. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  339. 

references  on,  336,  338. 

suggested  readings  in,  338. 
Cervantes,  364,  366. 
Chambered  Nautilus,  The,  261. 
Chambers,  Robert  W.,  401. 
Channing,  William,  163. 
Channing,  William  Ellery,  154,  402. 
Charles  I,  12,  14,  15. 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  10,  254. 
Cheney,  John  Vance,  418. 
Cherry  Valley  Massacre,  126. 
> Child,  Lydia  Maria,  402. 
Churchill,  Winston,  402. 
Civil  War,  11,  251,  290,  291,  335, 384, 388. 
Clarke,  James  Freeman,  402. 
Classic  School,  86. 
Clay,  Henry,  414. 

Clemens,  Samuel  L.  ("Mark  Twain"), 
10,  172,  341,  342,  343,  355-364,  365, 
366,  368. 

general  characteristics  of,  361-364. 

humor  of,  355,  361,  362,  364. 

life  of,  355-358. 

moral  quality  of,  358,  363. 

personal  philosophy  of,  362,  364. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  366. 

references  on,  365,  366. 

stories  of  Mississippi  Valley,  358-361. 

style  of,  363,  364. 

suggested  readings  in,  366. 
Clergy  (New  England),  35-37,  75,  136. 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  88,  97,  99,  103, 

110,  145,  264,  370. 
Colonial  literature,  9-64. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  63,  64. 

references  on,  60,  61.  ; 

suggested  readings  in,  62,  63. 

summary  of,  58-60. 
Columbus,  Christopher,  121,  122. 
Communipaw,  118. 
Comus,  51,  52,  55. 
Concord  Bridge,  179,  246. 
Concord,  Mass.,  181,  182,  194,  196,  211. 
Concord  group,  278. 


Cone,  Helen  Gray,  402. 
Conway,  Moncure  D.,  209. 
Cooke,  John  Esten,  414. 
Cooke,  Philip  Pendleton,  289. 
Cooke,  Rose  Terry,  402. 
Cooper,  James  Fenimore,  10,  88,  91,  125- 
134,  150,  151,  152,  186,  219,  308,  340, 
367. 

general  characteristics  of,  133,  134. 

life  of,  125-130. 

moral  quality  of,  134. 

pioneer  and  Indian  tales  of,  130-133, 149. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  152. 

references  on,  150,  151. 

36?  tales  of,  133,  151. 

style  of,  134. 

suggested  readings  in,  151. 
Cooperstown,  126,  128,  130. 
Copyright  law,  96,  278. 
Cotton,  John,  14,  35,  36,  37,  46. 
Courtship  of  Miles  Standish,  231,  232,  284, 

286. 

Cowper,  William,  99. 
Craddock,  Charles  Egbert.     See  Murfree, 

Mary  N. 
Craigie,  Pearl  Mary  Teresa  ("John  Oliver 

Hobbes"),  402. 

Cranch,  Christopher  Pearse,  402. 
Crane,  Ichabod,  119,  122. 
Crane,  Stephen,  402. 
Crawford,  F.  Marion,  402. 
"Croakers,"  The,   108,  109,  148,  151,  152. 
Cromwell,  Oliver,   15. 
Culprit  Fay,  The,  110. 
Curtis,  George  William,  166,  403. 

Dana,  Charles  A.,  166. 

Dana,  R.  H.  Sr.,  403. 

Dana,  R.  H.  Jr.,  403. 

Dante,  50,  52,  224. 

Darwin,  Charles,  274. 

Davis,  Richard  Harding,  403. 

Defoe,  Daniel,  55,  98. 

Deland,  Margaretta  W.,  403. 

Democratic  spirit  of  American  literature, 

68-70,  225,  226,    243,   342-364,   382- 

391,  397. 
De  Quincey,  Thomas,  146. 
Dial,  The,  162-165,  169,  278,  282. 
Dickens,  Charles,  274,  348. 
Dickinson,  Emily,  404. 
Dickinson,  John,  404. 
Disraeli,  Benjamin,  183. 
Dixon,  Thomas,  414. 
Dodge,  Mary  Mapes,  404. 
Dorr,  Julia  C.  R.,  404. 
Dowden,  Edward,  11. 
Drake,  Joseph  Rodman,  108-111,  148,  151. 

152. 


INDEX 


425 


Drayton,  Michael,  12. 

Dryden,  John,  22,  24,  55,  87,  290. 

Du  Bartas,  40. 

Dunbar,  Paul  Lawrence,  418. 

Dunne,  Finley  Peter,  418. 

Dutch,  The,  112,  117,  121,  135. 

Dwight,  John  S.,  404. 

Dwight,  Timothy,  85, 92, 93,  103, 105, 106. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  50-54,  59,  60,  70,  77, 
80,  85. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  64. 

references  on,  61,  63. 

sermon  on  hell  fire,  153,  154,  157. 

suggested  readings  in,  63. 
Egan,  Maurice  Francis,  404. 
Eggleston,  Edward,  418. 
Eliot,  George,  274. 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  15,  16,  17. 
Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  158,  159,  161,  162, 
163,  169,  178-193,  246, 396, 397. 

essays  of,  186-188. 

general  characteristics  of,  191-193. 

idealistic  philosophy  of,  185,  190,  192. 

life  of,  178-183. 

Lowell  on,  253. 

moral  quality  of,  179,  185,  186,  188,  191, 
192. 

oersonal  philosophy  of,  190. 

poetry  of,  182,  188-191. 

prose  of,  183-188. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  284,  285, 
286. 

references  on,  281,  282,  283. 

style  ef,  193. 

suggested  readings  in,  282,  283. 
England,  literary  dependence  on,  127. 
English  literature,  America's  debt  to,  9, 10. 

classical  age  of,  87. 

from  1607  to  1754,  54,  55. 

in  first  part  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
145,  146. 

in  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
98,  99. 

in  Victorian  age,  274,  275. 

influence  of,  on  early  American  fiction, 
85-88. 

romantic  movement  in,  86-88,  110. 
Evangeline,  228,  229,  279. 
Evans,  Augusta,  417. 
Evening  Post,  New  York,  116,  139. 
Everett,  Edward,  173,  175,  344,  404. 

F able  for  Critics,  247,  250,  253. 

Faerie  Queene,  206. 

Federalist,  71,  288. 

Fiction.     See  also  Morton,  Sarah  ;  Brown, 

C.  B.  ;  Irving  ;  Cooper  ;   Hawthorne  ; 

Poe  ;  Simms  ;  Cable  ;  Allen  ;    Harte  ; 


Clemens  ;   Howells  ;    James  ;    Wilkins 
Freeman. 

early  American,  85-92. 

Gothic  element  in,  88,  90,  91. 

influence  of  Richardson  on,  86. 

realiatic  school  of,  367-371,  373-380. 

romantic  element  in,  88,    90,    91,    119, 
120,  123,  124,  125,  130,  131,  211-221, 
297-301,  305,  306,  307,  308,  309,  326- 
328,  329,  347-349,  358-361. 
Field,  Eugene,  343,  349-352,  353. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  366. 

references  on,  365,  366. 

suggested  readings  in,  365,  366. 
Fielding,  Henry,  55,  85,  86,  98,  370.    ' 
Fields,  James  T.,  404. 
Fiske,  John,  404. 
Foote,  Mary  Hallock,  419. 
Ford,  Paul  Leicester,  404. 
Foster,  Stephen  Collins,  404. 
Fox,  John  Jr.,  414. 

Franklin,    Benjamin,    25,    47,    76-83,   84, 
89,  102,  103,  130,  396. 

general  characteristics  of,  80-83,  102. 

humor  of,  82. 

most  widely  read  colonial  writer,  80. 

philosophy  of,  80,  81,  82. 

Poor  Richard's  maxims,  81,  82. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  106. 

references  on,  104. 

suggested  readings  in,  105. 
Frederic,  Harold,  404. 
Freeman,    Mary    E.    Wilkins,   379,   380, 
392. 

characteristics  of,  380. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  394. 

references  on,  392,  393. 

suggested  readings  in,  393. 
French,  Alice  ("Octave  Thanet"),  419. 
French  and  Indian  War,  65,  100. 
Freneau,  Philip,  66,  96-98,  99,  103,   105, 

106. 

Fugitive  Slave  Act,  170,  275. 
Fuller,  Margaret,  158,  159,  162,  166. 

Garland,  Hamlin,  419. 

Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  169,  235. 

Gayarre,  Charles  E.  A.,  414. 

Gettysburg  Address,  177,  344. 

Gibbon,  Edward,  98. 

Gibbons,  James,  414. 

Gilder,  Richard  Watson,  404. 

Glasgow,  Ellen  Anderson  Gholson,  414. 

Godwin,  William,  90,  99. 

Goethe,  387,  411. 

Goldsmith,  Oliver,  114,  122,  124. 

Goodwin,  Maud  Wilder,  405. 

Gosse,  Edmund,  332. 

"Gothic,"  88,  90. 


426 


INDEX 


Grady,  Henry  W.,  414. 
Grant,  Robert,  405. 
Greeley,  Horace,  405. 
Green,  Anna  Katherine,  405. 
Guiney,  Louise  Imogen,  405. 

Hale,  Edward  Everett,  405. 

Halleck,  Fitz-Greene,    108-111,    145,    148, 

152,  157. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  70,  71,  75,  102-105. 
Hardy,  Arthur  S.,  405. 
Harland,  Henry  ("Sidney  Luska"),  405. 
Harris,  Joel  Chandler,  368. 

life  and  works  of,  320-323. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  340. 

references  on,  336,  337. 

suggested  readings  in,  338. 
Harte,  Bret,  10,  341,  343,  345-349,  352. 

life  of,  345-347. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  366. 

references  on,  365. 

suggested  readings  in,  365. 

works  of,  347-349. 
Hartford  Wits,  92,  96,  103. 
Hawkeye,  130. 
Hawthorne,  Julian,  405. 
Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,    10,    88,    91,    161, 
166,  167,  204-221,  296,  301,  304,  328, 
339,  341,  359,  366,  367,  376,  392,  398. 

at  Brook  Farm,  166,  167. 

general  characteristics  of,  219-221. 

great  romances  of,  214-219,  283,  286. 

life  of,  204-211. 

moral  quality  of,  212,  214,  215,  216,  218, 
219,  221,  279,  304,  398. 

on  Emerson,  183,  189. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  286. 

references  on,  281. 

short  stories  of,  211-214,  283,  286. 

style  of,  221. 

suggested  readings  in,  283. 
Hay,  John,  419. 
Hayne,  Paul  Hamilton,  238,  307,  335. 

life  and  works  of,  311,  312. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  339. 

references  on,  336,  337. 

suggested  readings  in,  337. 
Hearn,  Lafcadio,  415. 
Hedge,  Frederic  H.,  405. 
Hegan,  Alice  (Rice,  Alice  Hegan),  416. 
Henry,  O.  (Porter,  Sydney),  416. 
Henry,  Patrick,  73,  74,  75,  102,  105,  106, 

177. 

Herbert,  George,  40. 
Herrick,  Robert,  419. 
Hiawatha,  228,  229-231,  279. 
Higginson,  Thomas  Wentworth,  405. 
Hobbes,     John     Oliver     (Craigie,     Pearl 
Mary),  402. 


Hoffman,  Matilda,  115. 
Holland,  J.  G.,  406. 
Holley,  Marietta,  40d. 
Holmes,   Oliver  Wendell,    155,    168,    182. 
185,  191,  258-265. 

humor  of,  259,  260,  263,  264. 

life  of,  258-260. 

moral  quality  of,  261,  265. 

poetry  of,  260-262,  279,  284,  285. 

prose  of,  263-265,  279,  286. 

questions    and     suggestions    on,     285, 
286. 

references  on,  281,  282. 

suggested  readings  in,  284. 
Hooker,  Rev.  Thomas,  16. 
House  of  the  Seven  Gables,  The,  214,  216 

217,  221,  283,  286. 
Hovey,  Richard,  419. 
Howard,  Blanche  Willis,  406. 
Howe,  Julia  Ward,  406. 
Howells,  William  Dean,  330,  368,  369,  370, 
373-376,  378,  392. 

best  novels  of,  373. 

characteristics  of  his  work,  374,  375. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  394. 

references  on,  392,  393. 

suggested  readings  in,  393. 
Huckleberry  Finn,  172,  359-361. 
Hudson,  Hendrick,  113,  117,  119. 
Hudson  River,  113,  114,  124,  135. 
Hutchinson,  Thomas,  402,  406.      . 

Idealism,  185,  368,  372.     See  also  Romanti 
cism. 

Ideals.     See  Moral  Ideals. 
Identity,  372. 
Independence,  Declaration  of,  68,  69,  74, 

100. 

Indian,  18,  28,  91,  92,  117,  125,  132,  308. 
Ireland,  John,  406. 

Irving,  Washington,     107,     112-124,     133, 
219,  266,  301,  328,  339,  366,  367. 

explores  Sleepy  Hollow,  113. 

general  characteristics  of,  123,  124,  149. 

humor  of,  117,  118,  123,  152. 

invents   the    "Knickerbocker   Legend," 
116,  117. 

life  of,  112-116. 

Lowell's  recipe  for,  253. 

profits  from  writing,  115,  116. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  152. 

references  on,  150,  151. 

style  of,  124. 

suggested  readings  in,  151. 

works  of,  116-124. 

Jackson,  Andrew,  147,  148,  186. 
Jackson,  Helen  Hunt,  419. 
James  I,  14. 


INDEX 


427 


fames,    Henry,    368,    369,    370,  376-379, 
392,  393,  394. 

best  work  of,  377. 

characteristics  of  his  work,  376-379. 

compared  with  Howells,  396. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  394. 

references  on,  392,  393. 

suggested  readings  in,  393. 
James,  Henry,  Sr.,  376. 
James,  William,  376,  378. 
Jamestown,  11,  13. 
Janvier,  Thomas  Allibone,  406. 
Jefferson,  Thomas,  68-70,   75,   102,    105, 

106,  288. 

Jewett,  Sarah  Orne,  406. 
Job,  136. 

Johnson,  Samuel,  87,  98,  99. 
Johnston,  Mary,  415. 
Johnston,  Richard  Malcolm,  415. 

Kant,  156. 

Keats,  John,  88,  142,  146,  275,  326,  334, 

399. 

Kennedy,  J.  P.,  415. 
Key,  Francis  Scott,  415. 
King,  Charles,  406. 
King,  Grace,  415. 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  321,  340. 
Kirk,  Ellen  Olney,  406. 
Knickerbocker,  Diedrich,  116,  122,  123. 
Knickerbocker's  History  of  New  York,  107, 

123,  151,152,  266. 
Knickerbocker  Legend,  119,  135,  149,  396. 

Lamb,  Charles,  83,  146. 

Lanier,  Sidney,  292,  313-317,  335,  398. 

general  characteristics  of,  316,  317. 

life  of,  313,  314. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  339. 

references  on,  336,  337. 

suggested  readings  in,  338. 

works  of,  314-316. 
Larcom,  Lucy,  406. 
Lathrop,  George  P.,  406. 
Laud,  Archbishop,  14,  15. 
Lazarus,  Emma,  407. 
Leatherstocking  Tales,  130-133,  149. 
Leaves  of  Grass,  383-391. 
Leland,  Charles  Godfrey,  407. 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  177,  276,  290,  325,  343- 

345,  364,  365,  366,  387. 
Locke,  David  Ross,  407. 
Locke,  John,  50,  156. 
Lodge,  Henry  Cabot,  407. 
London,  Jack,  119. 

Longfellow,  Henry  W.,  222-233,  243,  249, 
279,  283,  285,  341. 

ballads  of,  227,  228,  284. 

compared  with  Whittier,  243. 


general  characteristics  of,  232,  233. 

laureate  of  common  heart,  225,  226. 

life  of,  222-225. 

longer    poems    of,    228-232,    283,    284. 
285,  286. 

moral  quality  of,  226,  232,  233. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  285,  286. 

references  on,  281,  282. 

suggested  readings  in,  283,  284. 
Longstreet,  Augustus,  415. 
Lounsbury,  T.  R., 

on  Cooper,  130. 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  96,  162,  169,  245- 
257,  263,  275,  279,  341,  389,  398. 

as  a  critic,  254,  255,  257. 

as  a  poet  of  nature,  252,  255,  256. 

early  years  of,  245-247. 

genius  of,  257. 

humor  of,  251,  252,  255,  257. 

influence  of  marriage  on,  247,  248. 

later  work  of,  248-250. 

moral  quality  of,  247,     250,     253,     254, 
256,  398. 

on  Emerson,  183,  192,  193. 

on  Thoreau's  style,  202. 

poetry  of,  250-253,  255-257,  284,  285, 
286. 

prose  of,  249,  254,  255,  257. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  285,  286. 

references  on,  282. 

suggested  readings  in,  284. 

versatility  of,  257. 
Lummis,  Charles  F.,  419. 
Luska,  Sydney  (Henry  Harland),  405. 

Mabie,  Hamilton  W.,  407. 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  274,  407. 

MacKaye,  Percy  Wallace,  407. 

Madison,  James,  101,  288. 

Magnalia,  59. 

Manse,  Old,  178. 

Marble  Faun,  210,  214,  217,  218. 

Markham,  Edwin,  419. 

Marks,  Mrs.  Lionel  (Peabody,  Josephine 

Preston),  408. 
Marlowe,  Christopher,  370. 
Marshall,  John,  415. 
Martin,  George  Madden,  415. 
Martineau,  Harriet,  186. 
Marvel,    Ik    (Mitchell,    Donald    Grant), 

407. 

Materialism,  147,  148,  150,  191. 
Mather,  Cotton,  39,    46-50,    59,    61,    63, 

64,  77,  82. 

Matthews,  James  Brander,  415. 
McCutcheon,  George  Barr,  419. 
McMaster,  John  Bach,  407. 
Melville,  Herman,  407. 
Mexican  War,  148,  251. 


428 


INDEX 


Miller,  Cincinnatua  Heine  (Joaquin),  Miller, 

420. 

Milton,  John,  10,  39,  40,  51,  54,  55. 
Mitchell,  Donald  Grant  (Ik  Marvel),  407. 
Mitchell,  S.  Weir,  407. 
Moody,  William  Vaughn,  420. 
Moore,  Clement  Clarke,  408. 
Moral  Ideals, 

Bryant's,  136,  143,  145. 

Cawein's,  334. 

Cooper's,  134. 

Emerson's,  185,  186,  187,  188,  191,  192, 
193. 

Franklin's,  80,  81,  102. 

Hawthorne's,  212,  214,  215,  216,  218, 
219,220,221,304,398. 

Howells's,  369. 

Lanier's,  316,  398. 

Lincoln's,  345. 

Longfellow's,  226,  232. 

Lowell's,  247,  253,  255,  256,  279,  398. 

of  democracy,  32,  37,  69,  72,  73,  101, 
147,  148,  185,  186,  255,  342,  343,  361, 
368,  385,  386,  388,  391,  392,  397. 

of  Jonathan  Edwards,  52. 

of  New  England  authors,  167,  168,  172, 
268,  280,  398. 

of  the  founder  of  the  Virginia  colony,  13. 

of  the  Puritans,  13,  32,  33,  34-37,  47, 
51,  52,  54,  60,  72,  85,  102,  136,  138. 

of  the  realistic  school,  368,  369,  371,  389. 

Tboreau's,  195,  202. 

Twain's,  Mark,  343,  363,  364. 

Whitman's,  384,  385,  386,  388,  389, 
391,  397. 

Whittier's,  237,  238,  242,  244,  261-  265, 
280,  398. 

Woolman's,  83,  84. 
Morse,  S.  F.  B.,  133. 
Morton,  Mrs.  Sarah,  85,  86. 
Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse,  211,  213,  283. 
Motley,  John  Lothrop,  267-269,  280. 
Moulton,  Ellen  Louise  Chandler,  408. 
Mullany,  P.  F.  (Brother  Azarias),  416. 
Murfree,    Mary    Noailles    (Craddock, 
Charles  Egbert),  330-332,  336. 

life  and  works,  330-332. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  340. 

references  on,  336,  337. 

suggested  readings  in,  339. 

Nasby,  Petroleum  V.  (Locke,  David  Ross), 

408. 
Nature, 

Charles  Brockden  Brown's  use  of,  91,  92. 
Emerson  on,  184,  185.  188-190,  193. 
in  Allen's  stories,  330,  336. 
in  Bryant's  verse,  99,  137,  138,  139,  140, 
141,  145,  146. 


in  Burroughs's  writings,  401. 

in  Cawein's  verse,  292,  332-334. 

in  Craddock's  stories,  331,  336. 

in  Drake's  verse,  110. 

in  Freneau's  verse,  97,  98. 

in  Hayne's  verse,  312. 

in  Lanier's  verse,  315,  316. 

in  Longfellow's  verse,  229,  230,  231. 

in  Lowell's  verse,  252,  255,  256,  279. 

in  Riley's  verse,  353. 

in  Tabb's  verse,  319. 

in  Timrod's  verse,  309,  310. 

in  Whitman's  verse,  387,  388,  389,  396. 
397. 

in  Whittier's  verse,  235,  240,  241,  242. 

new  view  of,  161,  162. 

Tboreau's    companionship    with,    194— 
200,  202,  203. 

transcendental    feeling    for,     158,    161, 
162,  184,  185,  188-190,  202,  203. 

Wordsworth's  view  of,  99,  144,  146. 
New  England.     See  also  Moral  Ideals. 

clergy  of,  35-37,  59. 

colonization  of,  13,  14,  15. 

Elizabethan  traits  in  early  colonists  of, 
15-17. 

ideals  of,  13.  30,  33,  34,  167,  168,  398. 

literature  of,  26-55,  59,  60,  153-286,  379, 
380. 

renaissance  of,  153,  155,  156. 
New  England  Primer,  34,  412. 
New  York,  as  a  literary  center,  107,  148. 
New  York  Evening  Post,  116,  139. 
Nicholson,  Meredith,  420. 
Norris,  Frank,  420. 
North  American  Review,  140,  142. 
Novel.     See  Fiction. 

Odell,  Jonathan,  408. 

O'Hara,  Theodore,  416. 

Oldstyle,  Jonathan,  114. 

Oratorical  Dictionary,  175. 

Orators,  71-75,  102,  105,  106,  173-177,283, 

288,  289,  343-345,  365. 
O'Reilly,  John  Boyle,  408. 
Oregon  Trail,  270,  271. 
Orphic  Sayings,  164. 
Otis,  James,  71-73,  102,  105,  106. 
Oxford  University,  122,  262. 

Page,  Thomas  Nelson,  323,  324,  336,  337, 

338. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  340. 
references  on,  336,  337. 
suggested  readings  in,  338. 
Paine,  Thomas,  67,  68,  102,  104. 
Parkman,  Francis,  270-273,  280. 
Partington,  Mrs.  (Shiliaber,  Benjamin  P.), 
408. 


INDEX 


429 


Paulding,  James  K.,  114. 

Payne,  John  Howard,  408. 

Peabody,  Josephine   Preston   (Mrs.  Lionel 

Marks),  408. 

Peabody,  Sophia,  207,  208. 
Peck,  Samuel  Minturn,  416. 
Pennell,  Joseph,  120. 
Perry,  Bliss,  387,  408. 
Phelps,  William  L.,  361. 
Phillips,  David  Graham,  420. 
Phillips,  Wendell,  173. 
Piatt,  John  James,  420. 
Pierce,  Franklin,  206,  209,  210,  211. 
Pierrepont,  Sarah,  50,  51,  52,  53. 
Pike,  Albert,  416. 
Pilgrims.    See  Puritans. 
Pilgrim's  Progress,  55,  77,  206,  344,  345. 
Pinkney,  Edward  Coate,  416. 
Plato,  28,  192,  387. 
Plymouth,  Bradford's  history  of,  26-28,  60, 

64. 

Pocahontas,  19,  20.  > 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  10,  88,  91,  288,  292, 
293-306,  335,  336,  337,  338,  339,  340, 
366,  367,  368,  376,  392,  396. 

critical  prose  of,  295,  299,  301,  337. 

develops  modern  short  story,  299. 

general  characteristics  of,  304-306,  335. 

life  of,  293-297. 

poetry  of,  296,  297,  301-303,  305,  335, 
337,  339. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  339. 

references  on,  336,  337. 

style  of,  304-306. 

suggested  readings  in,  337,  338. 

tales  of,  297-301,  304,  335,  338. 
Poor  Richard's  Almanac,  81,  82. 
Pope,  Alexander,  22,  55,  87,  103,  255,  290, 

386. 

Porter,  Sydney  ("O.  Henry"),  416. 
Portrait  of  a  Lady,  377. 
Prentice,  Geo.  D.,  416. 
Prescott,  William  H.,  266,  267,  280. 
Preston,  Margaret  Junkin,  416. 
Printing,  early,  25,  38. 
Puritans,  13-15,  25,  26-37,  44,  46,  47,48,  51, 
69,  216,  217,  219,  303,  306,  316,  363. 

clergy  of,  35-37. 

religion  of,  13,  33,  34,  153-155. 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  16,  358. 
Randall,  James  Ryder,  416. 
Read,  Thomas  Buchanan,  408. 
Realism,  367-372,  392,  393-395. 
Realists,  the  Eastern,  373-392. 
Reformation,  16. 

New  England's,  151-155. 
Reid,  Christian,  417. 
Renaissance,  New  England's,  155-167. 


Religion,  33-35,  39,  60,  101,  136,  153-155, 
398.     See  also  Channing,  Wm.  Ellery ; 
Clergy  ;  Edwards,  Jonathan  ;  Mather, 
Cotton;      Moral     Ideals;      Puritans; 
Reformation ;     Unitarianism. 
Repplier,  Agnes,  408. 
Revival  of  Learning,  16,  155,  156. 
Revolution,  literary  history  of,  65-106. 
Revolutionary   War,    11,    65,    66,    71,    72, 
75,  80,  96,  97,  100,  101,  1C3,  123,  293, 
306. 

Rhodes,  James  Ford,  420. 
Rice,  Alice  Hegan,  416. 
Rice,  Gale  Young,  416. 
Richardson,  Samuel,  55,  85,  86,  98,  102. 
Riggs,  Mrs.,  412. 
Riley,  James  Whitcorab,  343,  352-354,  36£, 

365,  366. 

life  and  works  of,  352-354. 
questions  and  suggestions  on,  366. 
references  on,  365. 
suggested  readings  in,  366. 
Ripley,  George,  165. 
Rip  Van  Winkle,  119,  122,  123,  124,  149, 

151,  152,  367. 

Rivfes,  Amelie  (Princess  Troubetskoy) ,  417. 
Roe,  Edward  Payson,  408. 
Rohlfs,   Mrs.  Charles  (Green,  Anna  Kath- 

erine),  405. 
Romanticism,   86-88,   110,   123,  367,  368, 

369,  370,  371,  392. 
Roosevelt,  Theodore,  409. 
Russell,  Irwin,  417. 
Ryan,  Father,  317,  318,  335,  339. 

Salem,  204,  205,  206,  209. 

Salmagundi,  114. 

Sandys,  George,  21,  22,  59. 

Sangster,  Margaret,  409. 

Saxe,  John  Godfrey,  409. 

Scarlet  Letter,  The,  209,  214,  215,  216,  218, 
220,  221,  283,  286,  398. 

Schouler,  James,  409. 

Scollard,  Clinton,  409. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  128,  134,  146,  227,  358. 

Seawell,  Molly  Elliot,  417. 

Sedgwick,  Catherine  M.,  409. 

Seton,  Ernest  Thompson,  420. 

Sewall,  Samuel,  43-45,  59,  63,  64. 

Shakespeare,  William,  9,  10,  15,  16,  17, 
20,  21,  59,  87,  215,  254,  257,  345,  370. 

Shaw,  Henry  Wheeler  ("Josh  Billings"), 
409. 

Shea,  John  Dawson  Gilmary,  409. 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  54,  90,  142,  145,  146. 

Shepard,  Thomas,  34,  48. 

Sherman,  Frank  Dempster,  409. 

Shillaber,  Benjamin  P.  ("Mrs.  Parting- 
ton"),  409. 


43° 


INDEX 


Short  Story,  the,  119-121,  211-214.  299- 

301,  321,  323,  324,  325,  329,  376,  377, 

380,  396. 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  16,  204. 
Sill,  Edward  Rowland,  420. 
Simms,  William  Gilmore,  290,  306-308, 

335,  338,  340. 
life  and  works  of,  306-308. 
questions  and  suggestions  on,  340. 
references  on,  336,  337. 
style  of,  308. 

suggested  readings  in,  338. 
Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam,  41,  42,  59,  82. 
Sketch  Book,  115,  118,  119,  152. 
Slavery,  148,  168-173,  237,  238,  239,  250, 

251,  260,  275,  276,  278,  283,  288,  289, 

335,  360,  361. 
Smith,  Captain  John,    13,   17-2O,  61,  62, 

63,  64,  91. 

Smith,  F.  Hopkinson,  417. 
Smith,  Samuel  F.,  410. 
Snow-Bound,  238,  240-243. 
South,  the  New,  290-292. 
Southern  Literature,     17-26,     59,     68-70, 

71,  73,  74,  101,  102,  287-340,  396,  398, 

414-417. 

Southern  Literary  Messenger,  295. 
Spalding,  John  L.,  420. 
Sparks,  Jared1,  410. 
Spearman,  Frank  H.,  420. 
Spectator,  The,  77,  114. 
Spens,  Sir  Patrick,  245,  246. 
Spenser,  Edmund,  10,  206. 
Spoflord,  Harriet  Prescott,  410. 
Standish,  Miles,  28,  231,  232. 
Stanley,  A.  P.,  217. 
Stedman,  Edmund  Clarence,  410. 
Steele,  Richard,  98. 
Stephen,  Leslie,  85. 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  11. 
Stith,  William,  417. 
Stockton,  Frank  R.,  410. 
Stoddard,  Charles  Warren,  410. 
Stoddard,  Richard  Henry,  410. 
Story,  William  Wetmore,  410. 
Story.     See  Short  Story  and  Fiction. 
Stowe,  Harriet     Beecher,     169-173,     278, 

281,  283,  286,  361. 
Strachey,  William,  20,  21,  62,  64. 
Stuart,  Ruth  McEnery,  417. 
Sumner,  Charles,  173,  410. 
Sunnyside,  115,  116. 
Swift,  Jonathan,  55,  98. 
Symonds,  John  Addington,  11,  387. 

Tabb,JohnBannister,318-320,335,337,339. 
questions  and  suggestions  on,  339. 
references  on,  336,  337. 
suggested  readings  in,  338. 


Tanglewood  Tales,  213,  214. 
Tarkington,  Newton  Booth,  421. 
Taylor,  Bayard,  411. 
Ten   Commandments,    14,    185,   219,   286, 

396. 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  243,  274,  275,  339,  387. 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  274. 
Thanatopsis,  138,  140,  141,  150,  151,  152. 
Thanet,  Octave  (French,  Alice),  419. 
Thaxter,  Celia  Laighton,  411. 
Thomas,  Edith,  411. 
Thompson,  Maurice,  421. 
Thompson,  William  Tappan,  417. 
Thoreau,  Henry  D.,  157,    162,    169,    182, 
194-203,  213,  246,  279,  283,  286,  311, 
388,  401. 

Emerson  and,  196. 

general  characteristics  of,  200-203,  411. 

Journal  of,  199,  200,  202,  203,  411. 

life  of,  194-197. 

Lowell  on,  202. 

moral  quality  of,  195,  202. 

naturalist,  195,  197,  199,  200,  201-203. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  286. 

references  on,  281. 

style  of,  202,  203. 

suggested  readings  in,  283. 

works  of,  197-203. 
Threnody,  182. 
Ticknor,  George,  411. 
Tiernan,  Frances  F.,  417. 
Timrod,  Henry,  238, 308-310,  335,  337, 339. 

li)*8  and  works  of,  308-310. 

queetions  and  suggestions  on,  339. 

references  on.  336,  337. 

suggested  readings  in,  337. 
Tocqueville,  Alexis  de,  185. 
Torrey,  Bradford,  411. 
Tourgee,  Albion  W.,  411. 
Transcendentalism,  156-161. 
Trent,  W.  P.,  173. 
Troubetskoy,  Princess,  417. 
Trowbridge,  John  Townsend,  411. 
Trumbull,  John,  92,  94-96,  103,  105,  106. 
Tucker,  Ellen,  180. 

Twain,  Mark.     See  Clemens,  Samuel  L. 
Twice  Told  Tales,  207. 
Tyler,  M.  C.,  14,  15. 
Tyndall,  John,  192,  286. 

Uncas,  132,  134. 

Uncle  Remus,  292,  322,  323. 

Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  170-173,  275,  278,  283. 

Sand,  George,  on,  173. 

Trent,  W.  P.,  on,  173. 
Unitarianism,  154,  155.     See  also  Religion. 

Van  Dyke,  Henry,  411. 

Van  Tassel,  Katrina,  119,  120. 


INDEX 


431 


Van  Twiller,  Wouter,  118. 
Virginia,  11,  12,  18,  20,  21,  24,  61,  62,  287- 
289,  294,  318,  323.     See  also  Southern 
Literature. 
Elizabethan  characteristics  of  early  set 
tlers  of,  15-17. 
ideals  ol  founder  of,  13. 
Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,  247,  250,  252,  253, 
275. 

Walden,  195,  197,  198,  199. 

Wallace,  Lew,  421. 

Walpole,  Horace,  88. 

Ward,    Artemus    (Browne,    Charles    F.), 

401. 

Ward,  Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps,  411. 
Ward,  Nathaniel,  41-43,  59,  61,  63,  64. 
Warner,  Charles  Dudley,  412. 
Washington,  George,  25,  67,  83,  100,  122, 

123,  147,  249,  256,  288. 
Webster,  Daniel,  174-177,  239,  240,  278, 
233.  i 

greatest  orations  of,  176,  177. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  286. 

references  on,  280,  281,  283. 

suggested  readings  in,  283. 

training  for  speaking  of,  174,  175. 

Whittier  on,  174,  239,  240. 
Webster,  Noah,  412. 
Weed,  Thurlow,  129. 
Weems,  Mason  Locke,  417. 
West,  The, 

democratic  spirit  of,  342,  343,  361,  364. 

newness  of,  341,  342. 

writers  of,  341-366,  418-421. 
Westcott,  Edward  Noyes,  412. 
Wharton,  Edith,  412. 
Whipple,  Edwin  Percy,  412. 
Whitcher,  Frances  ("Widow  Bedott"),  412. 
White,  Maria,  247,  248. 
White,  Stewart  Edward,  421. 
Whitman,   Walt,  371,  372,   381-391,   392, 
393,  394,  395,  397. 

altruistic  qualities  of,  384,  385,  386,  388, 
391. 

an  individualist,  397. 

democratic  spirit  of,  382,  384,  385,  386, 
388,  390,  391. 


fondness  for  the  sea,  389,  390,  391. 

general  characteristics  of,  388-391. 

ideals  of,  384,  385,  386,  388,  391. 

life  of,  381-384. 

nature  in,  387,  388,  389,  396,  397. 

poetry  of,  384-391,  394,  395. 

prose  of,  382,  389,  394. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  394,  395. 

realism  of,   371,  372,  385,  389,  390-392. 

references  on,  393. 

suggested  readings  in,  393,  394. 
Whitney,  Adeline  Dutton  Train,  412. 
Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,     84,     162,     169, 
234-244,  279,  284,  285,  398. 

an  opponent  of  slavery,  237,  238,  239,  240. 

compared  with  Longfellow,  243. 

general  characteristics  of,  243,  244. 

life  of,  234-239. 

moral  quality  of,  238;  242,  244,  279,  398. 

poetry  of,  239-244. 

questions  and  suggestions  on,  285. 

references  on,  282. 

suggested  readings  in,  284. 
Wiggin,  Kate  Douglas  (Mrs.  Riggs),  412. 
Wigglesworth,  Michael,  38,  39,  59,  63. 
Wilcox,  Ella  Wheeler,  421. 
Wilde,  Richard  Henry,  289. 
Wilkins,    Mary   E.    See    Freeman,    Mary 

E.  Wilkins. 
Williams,  Roger,  36,  155,  413. 
Willis,  N.  P.,  413. 
Wilson,  Augusta  Evans,  417. 
Wilson,  Woodrow,  417. 
Winsor,  Justin,  413. 
Winter,  William,  413. 
Winthrop,    John,    16,    29-33,    30,    36,    59, 

61,  63,  64. 
Winthrop,  Theodore,  413. 
Wirt,  William,  417. 
Wister,  Owen,  413. 
Wonder  Book,  213,  214,  283. 
Woodberry,  George  E.,  349,  413. 
Woolman,  John,  83,  84,  102,  105,  106. 
Woolson,   Constance   Fenimore,  413. 
Wordsworth,  WilliaJm,  10,  88,  99,  103,  13-7, 
142,  143,  144,  146,  149,  152,  162,  254, 
275,  370. 


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